The Lightning Thief: My Version
by Mistle11411
Summary: You think you know everything about me don't you? Well I'm about to tell you the truth. Rick Riordan wrote the basics and changed everything else. Now I, Percy Jackson am about to tell you the truth. I know suckish summary but the prologue is way better. Rated M cause I'm paranoid. Physical abuse and cursing.
1. Prologue

_Prologue:_

_All of you think you know all about me, don't you?_

_You guys think you know all about the myths that were written by Rick Riordan, but you are WRONG, what he wrote was the layout of it but he hid a lot of the truth of what really happened. He put in everything that he liked and left out anything that he didn't._

_Now I, Percy Jackson, will tell you the whole truth, that which was kept away from you for so long. Some things might be similar to everything you've read, but once you hear about my real life, you'll rethink everything you think you know about me. I'm warning you now because what I'm about to tell you is far worse than you would've thought. But it has to be done. You have to know the truth. I'll be helped by someone in this story you didn't know about, somebody that Rick kept secret from you because he didn't like all the extra dialogue he might've had to write. And that person is my little sister that he didn't want mentioned, or her best friend, or the actual traitor turned hero at the end, or Luke's actual persona(or gender.) My little sister will also be telling her share in this story. Although some of you might be shocked to hear some of these things. _

_Keep reading if you think you can handle what we're about to tell you, but don't say I didn't warn you._


	2. I Somehow Vaporize My Math Teacher

**A/N: From now on, if you see any authors note at top or bottom you do not have to read, its optional but I suggest you read just in case. Flames and ideas excepted and sorry if it kinda sucks cause this is the first story I've ever written. Okay I'm done.**

**OH, and a special thanks goes out to LongLoreLover for being the first one to review and follow me and to werewolves1999 for being the first one to favorite my story.**

**Sorry it took so long to update by the way.**

**Disclaimer: I don't and never will own PJO, it belongs to Rick Riordan.**

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Percy's POV

Look here, okay, I didn't want to be a half-blood..demigod..half-god….. Or whatever I am. If you're reading this and think your one, my advice is: close this book right now and to do one of these things: dig a hole and bury it, turn on the fireplace and chuck it in there, give it to your dog to chew up, rip it to shreds, or run outside and chuck it down the sewer even. Unless it's a library book, and if it is return it to the library as fast as you can to get away from the book. Believe whatever lie your mom, dad, or parents told you about your birth and try to lead a normal life.

Being a half-blood is 1. Dangerous, 2. A lot of the time it gets you killed in the slowest, most painful ways to mankind that would have even made the Nazis run for their moma's.

If you're a normal kid that's bored and just lookin for something interesting to read, great. Read on. I envy you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened(or will happen sometime in the possible near future.)

But if you recognize yourself in these pages-if you feel something stirrin inside you-stop reading immediately and go back to the top and do one of my suggestions for destroyin this book or the library thing. Cause you might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before _they_ sense it too, and _they'll _come for you.

Don't say I didn't warn you.

My name's Percy Jackson.

I'm twelve years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York, with my little 6 year old sister Mistle Jackson.

Am I a troubled kid?

Yes, definitely.

My little sister? At times yes, most of the time she's just a cutie, always doing what she's told to do… well, most of the time, but she's still a little hyperactive kid and more so with her ADHD.

Now back to the story.

I could start at any point in my short, horror-filled life to prove it, but things really started going wrong last May, when our sixth-grade and first-grade class's took a fieldtrip to Manhattan- fourteen mental case middle school kids and fourteen little hyperactive devils(not counting Mistle of course, unless her ADHD was getting the best of her today) and three teachers on a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff.(Yay. Stuff.) But at least it interested Mistle so that it wouldn't bore her to death and make her want to run around the museum instead.

I know-to some of you it sounds like torture(most educational trips tend to veer that way it seems.)

Most Yancy fieldtrips were.

But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher(as well as Mistle's Latin teacher too. Don't ask cause I don't know why a 6 year old first-grader has to take Latin) so I had hopes(that I myself wouldn't die of boredom.)

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a motorized wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool(at first sight you'd probably think he belonged in a crazy house or was homeless or both), but he told stories(a whole lot and a whole lot more of stories) and jokes(actual jokes that actually made you laugh for real and not that crap that most teachers think is "funny" and you laugh just to make them feel better) and let us play games( not video games but still pretty awesome) in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman(or is it Greek? I'm not completely sure) armor and weapons, so he was the only teacher whose class didn't put me to sleep(98% of the time.)

I hoped this trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.

Boy, was I wrong(read: horribly, horribly wrong on, like, ten different levels.)

See, bad things happen to me on fieldtrips. Like at my fifth-grade school, when we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with a Revolutionary War cannon. I wasn't aiming for the school bus(now that I think about it, I have no idea what I was aiming at), but of course, I got expelled anyways.

And before that, at my fourth-grade school, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk and our class took an unplanned swim(and I'm pretty sure the sharks talked to me, which totally freaked me out, and later Mistle told me the sharks had talked to the both of us, which freaked me out even more.) And the time before that...Well, you get the idea.

This trip, I was determined to be good(read: tolerable.)

All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, redheaded girl, kleptomaniac(possibly psycho) hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup(don't ask cause I'll never know) sandwich.

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades' because he was the only sixth-grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled.

He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should have seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria(just in case you're in his way when he's running towards the line, I suggest you get out of the way unless you want to be run over.)

Anyways, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do back to her(yet, anyways) because I was already on probation. The headmaster had threatened me with death by in-school suspension(and two three hour long lectures) if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

"I'm going to kill her," Mistle and I said in unison(I wanted to kill her, but alas, I couldn't and I could tell that Mistle wanted to kill her, too, but she was also on probation for "supposedly" hurting some of the other first-graders, but she was too nice to do that, so it didn't surprise me that she wanted to kill Nancy cause of how she was treating Grover. Damn you probation! Always having to mess up things for us.)

Grover tried to calm us down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."

"_But with ketchup?"_ I thought.

Mistle voiced my thoughts exactly. _"But with ketchup, Grover?"_

"It's _okay_," I could tell Grover was just trying to calm us down, but it didn't help much.

Mistle just turned back around in her seat, huffed, and glared at the back of the seat in front of her, but I could tell that she was still paying attention to us and Nancy.

He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.

"That's it," I said and started to get up, but Grover pulled me back to my seat. When Mistle saw that I had been pulled down by Grover, she started to get up and turn around from the seat right in front of us. Grover pulled her down, too.

"You guys are already on probation," he reminded us. "You know who'd get blamed if anything happens."

Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy Bobofit right then and there, and let Mistle deck her, too, along with me(maybe I should go back and do that.)

ISS(in school suspension for you guys who don't know what it means) would've been nothing compared to the mess(the danger) I was about to get myself into.

Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery. Mistle's head whipped back and forth, sea green eyes filled with curiosity and drinking in every little thing.

I could tell that it blew her mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years, like it blew my mind, too.

He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a _stele_, for a girl about my age. He told us about the carvings on the sides. Mistle and I were trying to listen to what he had to say, cause it was kind of interesting, but everyone around me kept talking, and every time I told them to shut up, the other middle school chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give me the evil eye. Each time Mistle told her classmates to shut up, the other teacher chaperone for the first-graders, Mrs. Electric, would then give her the evil eye, which I didn't like very much.

You see, I'm what you can call overprotective of Mistle, I would protect her with my life if I had to. She's the best little sister anyone could have, and anyone who hated having to have her for a sister or part of her family at all, would be out of their right mind. I'd also watched her a lot more closely and would barely let her out of my sight if she was with me, ever since a few years ago, when she had been two and I was eight, I had stapled together some papers and left the stapler on a low table. I had gone to make some sandwiches in the kitchen cause we were hungry, and I had been about to start, when all of a sudden, I heard Mistle crying as if she were hurt or in trouble. I had run into the living room with a knife when I saw her lip bleeding and the stapler on the floor by her feet. I realized she had tried to eat the stapler. I had to pull the staple out with a pair of tweezers, but it's a good thing it wasn't fully stapled like with papers. She still has a scar on the center of her bottom lip from it, and I'm pretty sure it isn't ever going to go away. Since that day I've been a lot more watchful of her.

But back to the school trip, Mrs. Dodds was this little math teacher from Georgia who always wore a black leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to drive a Harley into your locker(and countless other things.) She had come to Yancy halfway into the school year, when our last math teacher had a nervous breakdown(I might have or might've not caused it. Not sayin I did, not sayin I didn't.)

From her first day, loved Nancy Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her point her crooked finger at me and say, "Now, honey," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get after school detention for a month. Mrs. Electric would be like that with Mistle, except Mrs. Electric loved Nancy's little sister, Shiley Bobofit, and they looked the exact same. Mistle and I swore they were twins.

One time, after she'd made me erase answers from old math workbooks until midnight, I told Grover I didn't think Mrs. Dodds was human. Mistle also told him she didn't think Mrs. Electric was human that same day, because all during recess, she was forced to stay inside and erase answers written in old grammar textbooks(She'd gone to our room to wait for me with Grover.) He looked at us, real serious, and said, "You're absolutely right." (He was absolutely right, of course.)

Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.

Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele, and I turned around and said "Will you _shut up!?_"

It came out louder than I meant it to.

The whole group, except for Mistle and Grover, laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.

"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"

My face was totally red, probably making my usually unnoticable(unless its during the summer, you looked real closely, or had known me for awhile) freckles spattered across my nose and cheeks, very noticable. I said, "No, sir."

Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what this picture represents?"

'_Sigh. Well I guess I couldn't be invisible the whole time.' _I looked at the carving, and felt a flush of relief because I actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?"

"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied(he's never satisfied with me.)

"And he _did_ this _because…"_

"Well, Kronos was the king god-,"

"Titan," Mistle whispered to me as soon as I said god.

"And-,"

"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.

"Titan," I corrected myself, and getting what Mistle meant when she said titan. "And he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them, right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave him a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters-"

"Eeew" said one of the girls behind me(Awesome!)

"-and so there was this big fight in between the gods and the titans," I continued, "and the gods won."

Some snickers from the group.

Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"(*sigh* If only it did. My life would be so much easier.)

"And why, Mr. Jackson," Mr. Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does this matter in real life?"

'_How in the of name fuckin' hell do you expect me to know?' _I wondered. Like seriously, how did he expect me to know?

"Busted," Mistle and Grover muttered in unison.

"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red than her hair.

At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.

I thought about his question(I really didn't but what did you expect me to do?), and shrugged. "I don't know, sir."

"I see," Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off, the girls holding their stomachs, well… all the girls except Mistle, who wasn't fazed by the story at all, and the guys pushing each other around and acting like doofuses(and exactly why girls don't like us, read: tend to hate us.)

Grover and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."

I knew that was coming.

I told Mistle and Grover to keep going. Then I turned toward Mr. Brunner. "Sir?"

Mr. Brunner had this look that wouldn't let you go-intense brown eyes that could've been a thousand years old and had seen everything.

"You must learn the answer to my question," Mr. Brunner told me.

"About the Titans?"

"About real life. And how your studies apply to it, as well as Mistle's,"

'But how do they apply to our lives?' I thought. I refrained from voicing that thought and just said "Oh." I've learned that the best thing to do when a teacher comes up to you with questions or a lecture is to answer in as short of words as you possibly can and allow no room for further discussion or else you'll be there forever listening to them go on and on and on.

"What you learn from me," he said, "is vitally important. I expect you to treat it as such. I will accept only the best from you, Percy Jackson. And I expect you to teach your sister to treat it as importance as well."

I wanted to get angry, this guy pushed me so hard. And how is it vital to me and my sister?

I mean, sure, it was kind of cool on tournament days, when he dressed up in a suit of Roman armor and shouted: "What ho!" and challenged us, sword point against chalk, to run up to the board and name every Greek and Roman person who ever _lived_, and their mother, and what god they worshipped(I always lost the game after, my, like, fifth guy.)

But Mr. Brunner expected me to be as good as everybody else, despite the fact that I have dyslexia and attention deficit disorder and I had never made above a C- in my life. No, he didn't expect me to be _as good, _he expected me to be _better_. And I just couldn't learn all those names and facts, much less spell them correctly. At least I had made and helped Mistle read when she was younger and still do so her dyslexia doesn't trouble her much at all, really.

I mumbled something about trying harder, and teaching Mistle how to treat his teachings as importance, while Mr. Brunner took one long last look at the stele, like he'd been at this girl's funeral.

He told me to go outside and eat my lunch.

The class gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue(I know, really interesting right.)

Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured it was global warming or something, because the weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas.

We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes(which caused Mistle to sneak into my side of the hall and spend the night sleeping with me in Grover's and my dorm room with her blankie and teddy bear that I gave her when she was still a little brand new infant that she later named Buttons.) I wouldn't be surprised if this was a hurricane blowing in(which meant that Mistle would probably sneak into the dorm room to sleep with me tonight.)

Nobody else seemed to notice except for Mistle, who commented on it when I got outside. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers(you have no idea how mad that made Mistle and me . They're just animals minding their own business, not bothering anyone, they sure as heck didn't do anything to you.) Nancy and Shiley Bobofit were trying to pickpocket something from some lady's purses, and, of course, Mrs. Dodds wasn't seeing a thing.

Grover, Mistle, and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from _that_ school-the school for loser freaks who have no chance of making it elsewhere.

"Detention?" Mistle and Grover ask in unison.

"Nah," I said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean-I'm not a genius."

"You got that right," Mistle said teasingly, slightly pushing her bangs out of her eyes.

"Oh, ha, ha very funny," I say back to her sarcastically.

Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when we thought he was going to give me some deep philosophical comment to make me feel better , he said, "Can I have your apple?"(that is so like him.) I didn't have much of an appetite, so I let him take it, and Mistle started to laugh for about a whole minute, the usually unnoticable(unless you looked real closely or had seen her during the summer or known her for awhile)freckles that were spattered across her nose and cheeks slightly scrunching up, before calming down, Grover and I having amused smiles(Grover still eating his apple), because she was easily amused and she was absolutely adorable when she laughed. If you got her to laugh hard enough or long enough she would snort and then start laughing all over again, like I said, she's easily amused.

I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mom's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my sixth school in six years and I was probably going to be kicked out again. I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me. It's that kind of look parent's give their kids when they think that they're failing at raising their children and then deem themselves failures for life.

Mr. Brunner parked his wheelchair at the base of the handicapped ramp. He ate celery while he read a paperback novel. A red umbrella stuck up from the back of his chair, making it look like a motorized café table.

I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy and Shiley Bobofit appeared in front of us with their ugly friends(the first graders had nasty sneers on their faces that shouldn't have been there, not making them look like the innocent little things their supposed to be)-I guess Nancy and Shiley had gotten tired of stealing from the tourists-and dumped their half-eaten lunch's in Grover's lap.

"Oops," they grinned at us with their crooked teeth. Their freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted their face's with liquid Cheetos.

I tried to stay cool, and so did Mistle but she was able to hold it in, me, I had to try and remind myself. The school counselor had told me a million times, "Count to ten, get control of your temper." But I was so mad my mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.

I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Nancy was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming, "Percy pushed me!"

Shiley whispered to one of her friends, "OMG, Percy is such a freak." But Mistle, Grover, and I heard, and at those words, Mistle lost her temper.

Rage filled her usually calm sea green eyes, she clenched her fists, and clenched her jaws together, and when I looked at her eyes again, her eyes were such a dark green, they almost looked black. Then all of a sudden, the water in the fountain reached out and grabbed Shiley by the waist and threw her into the fountain, soaking her down, and it only took a second for the whole thing to happen.

As soon as Shiley regained her senses, she screamed, "Mistle pushed me!"

'_We're fifteen feet away, how could we have pushed you two into the fountain' _I wondered.

Mrs. Dodds and Mrs. Electric materialized next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering:

"Did you see-"

"-the water-"

"-like it grabbed them-"

I didn't know what they were talkin about, and I could tell Mistle didn't either. The only thing both of us knew was that we were in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Dodds was sure poor little Nancy was okay and Mrs. Electric poor little Shiley, promising to get them new shirts at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Dodds turned on me and Mrs. Electric to Mistle. There was a triumphant fire in their eyes, as if we'd done something they'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, honey-," Mrs. Dodds said as Mrs. Electric said to Mistle, "Now, sweetie-."

"I know," we grumbled. "A month erasing workbooks," I said as Mistle said, "A month erasing textbooks."

That wasn't the right thing to say to the either of them(it never is.)

"Come with me," said the teachers in unison.

"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. _I _pushed them."

I stared at him stunned, as did Mistle. Neither of us could believe he was trying to cover for us. Mrs. Dodds scared him to death, as did Mrs. Electric, they scared Grover to death. This is why I liked Grover(or in Mistle's case, loved, because Grover was like a big brother to her, and she loved him a whole lot, but not as much as me, I could tell, or as much as our babysitter, which was also like a big brother, too, and somebody she had grown up her whole life with, but he wasn't my babysitter now, he just helped me take care of Mistle and to just hang out cause he'd known us since we were really little kids.) He was such a good friend.

They glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," they said.

"But-"

"You-_will-_stay-here."

Grover looked at us desperately.

"It's okay, man," we told him. "Thanks for trying."

"Honey," Mrs. Dodds barked while Mrs. Electric barked at Mistle, "Sweetie."

"_Now."_

Nancy and Shiley Bobofit smirked.

We gave them our deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stares. Although I knew Mistle didn't really mean it, she was just _too_ nice sometimes, until it came to protecting her family and friends, then she'd do anything at all, even if it meant hurting someone, which was way out of her nature, she didn't really like violence.

Then we turned to face Mrs. Dodds and Mrs. Electric, but they weren't there. They were standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at us to come on.

How'd they get there so fast?

I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. The doctors say it's because of the accident that happened when I was around three or four years old. My councilors say it's the ADHD. MY therapists say it's both. I'm pretty sure Mistle felt like that too, cause she looked confused, and it's for all the same reasons as mine, but the doctors say it could also be the chip in her head very slightly malfunctioning for just a few short seconds.

I wasn't so sure. And I could tell Mistle wasn't so sure, either.

We went after our teachers.

Halfway up the steps, Mistle and I looked back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between us and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted Mr. Brunner to notice what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.

We looked back up. Mrs. Dodds and Mrs. Electric had disappeared again. They were now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, I thought. They're going to make us buy new shirts for Nancy and Shiley at the gift shop.

But apparently that wasn't the plan.

Mistle was led into a part of the museum that was being renovated, and then even deeper into the museum to have her talk with Mrs. Dodds.

I followed Mrs. Dodds deeper into the museum. When I finally caught up to her, we were back in the Greek and Roman section.

Except for us the gallery was empty.

Mrs. Dodds stood with her arms crossed in front of a big marble frieze of the Greek gods. She was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.

Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Dodds. Something about the way she looked at the frieze, as if she wanted to pulverize it…

"You've been giving us problems, honey," she said.

I did the safe thing. I said, "Yes, ma'am."

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"

The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.

She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt me.

I said, "I'll-I'll try harder, ma'am."

Thunder shook the building.

"Now listen, Percy Jackson," Mrs. Dodds said in an actually sweet and caring sounding voice. "Confess and things shall be easier."

I didn't know what she was talking about, and her tone perplexed me.

All I could think was that the teacher's had found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room with Mistle. That or she was high or something.

Or maybe they realized I'd gotten my essay on _Tom Sawyer _from the internet without ever reading the book, and now they were going to take away my grade. Or worse, they were going to make me read the book.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, I don't…"

"Your time is up," she hissed.

Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a pen in his hand.

"What ho, Percy," he shouted, and tossed the pen through the air.

Mrs. Dodds lunged at me.

With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear. I snatched the ballpoint pen out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a pen anymore. It was a sword-Mr. Brunner's sword, which he always used on tournament day.

Mrs. Dodds spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.

My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.

She snarled, "Die, honey!"

And she flew straight at me.

Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.

The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. _Hisss!_

Mrs. Dodds was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.

I was alone.

There was a ballpoint pen in my hand.

Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.

My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with dope or something.

Had I imagined the whole thing?

I went back outside.

It had started to rain(cliché much?)

Grover was sitting by the fountain, a museum map tented over his head. Nancy and Shiley Bobofit were standing on opposite sides of the fountain, both still soaked from their swim, grumbling to their ugly friends. When Nancy saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Kerr whipped your butt."

I said, "Who?"

"Our _teacher._ Duh!"

I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Kerr. I asked Nancy what she was talking about.

She just rolled her eyes and turned away.

I asked Grover where Mrs. Dodds was.

He said, "Who?"

But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me.

"Not funny, man," I told him. "This is serious."

Thunder boomed overhead.

I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.

I went over to him.

He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my pen. Please bring your own writing utensils in the future, Mr. Jackson."

I handed Mr. Brunner the pen. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.

"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Dodds?"

He stared at me blankly. "Who?"

"The other teacher chaperone. Mrs. Dodds. The pre-algebra teacher."

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Percy, there is no Mrs. Dodds on this field trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Dodds at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling alright?"

I told him I must've just imagined it and went to sit back down by Grover.

I was still confused, and when I looked back up, I saw Mistle coming down the steps and looking spooked with wide eyes. Shiley saw her and made some snide comment. Mistle looked confused and asked a question. Shiley rolled her eyes and answered Mistle, but Mistle still must've not gotten what Shiley was talking about because she just turned away and continued to talk to her friends.

Mistle came over with a confused look on her face, and asked Grover, "Where's Mrs. Electric?"

Grover answered back "Who?" but he responded the same way I did when I asked where Mrs. Dodds was and she answered back with the same thing I had said, and then she asked me the same question, but I hadn't and told her exactly that.

She went over and asked Mr. Brunner the same question she had asked us, but he looked confused, probably saying he didn't know who she was talking about, and then he saw something in her hand, and probably asked for something back, because a second later she handed him something that looked like a bracelet with a few different charms on it. They talked for a second or so more, before Mistle came over and sat down next to me, with the confused expression still plastered on her face.

Then she leaned into me and whispered in my ear, to where only I could hear what she said, "I'm confused, and there's something fishy going on here."

I whispered right back to her, "I'm confused, too, and there is something going on." And with that our conversation ended.

* * *

**Sooooo, love it, hate it. Remember I will take flames and ideas.**

**Again thank you to LongLoreLover and werewolves1999.**

**The next chapter will be this exact same chapter but in Mistle's point of view so it'll take a little longer to update then this one did. And yet again sorry for the late update.**

**Until next time, this is Mistle11411 signing out.**


	3. I Accidently Vaporize My ELA Teacheroops

**A/N: Okay so this is my first chapter that I'm writing in Mistles' point of view so I'm really sorry if it sucks or you don't like it. And I'm so sorry for the late update!**

**By the way…Please Review!**

**Percy and Mistle would want you to. **

**Disclaimer: I don't and never will own PJO, it belongs all to Rick Riordan.**

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Mistle's POV

Look here, okay. I didn't want to be a half-blood, demigod, or whatever name you want to call me that's related to the ones I mentioned. I didn't choose it, so I ain't gonna fight it. I'm sure Percy's already told you what to do if you're reading this and think your one, so my advice is: listen to what Percy told you to do even if it sounds kinda crazy. After you do that, that is, if you do it at all, believe whatever lie your mommy or daddy or both told you about your birth and try to lead a normal life.

Being a half-blood is dangerous, scary, and gets you killed in the slowest most painful ways possible. Well, sometimes, that is.

If you're a normal kid that's just looking for something interesting to read, cool. Keep reading. I'm just the slightest bit jealous of you for being able to believe that none of this ever happened(or will happen in the near future.)

But if you can see yourself in these pages-if you feel something stirrin up in your stomach makin you feel all funny up inside-stop reading immediately, and take my big brothers advice. Cause you might be one of us. And once you know that, it's only a matter of time before _they_ sense it too, and _they'll _come for you.

Don't say I didn't warn you, or that my big brother didn't warn you either.

My name's Mistle Jackson.

I'm six years old. Until a few months ago, I was a boarding student at Yancy Academy, a private school for troubled kids in upstate New York, with my big 12 year old brother Percy Jackson.

Yeah, I am, just not in the way you think. Even my brother doesn't know about the troubled kid I am.

My big brother? He says he is, but I don't think he's a troubled kid, really.

Although, if our ADHD's acting up, then we're troubled kids. But Percy likes to call me munchkin, shortie, and cutie. He thinks I'm the sweetest, cutest little thing in the world ever, although I could think of a lot of things that are cuter and sweeter than I am.

Now back to the story.

I could start at any point in my short, miserable, pain-filled, horror-filled life to prove it, but things really started going bad last May, when our first-grade and sixth-grade class's took a fieldtrip to Manhattan (they were small classes) - fourteen middle school mental case kids and fourteen little hyperactive devils like myself, and three teachers in a yellow school bus, heading to the Metropolitan Museum of Art to look at ancient Greek and Roman stuff. (Yay! I finally get to go!) Percy didn't look so excited, but I couldn't help but be excited. I absolutely loved history!

I know to a lot of people it sounds like torture(some educational fieldtrips were like that, even to me.)

Some Yancy fieldtrips were.

But Mr. Brunner, our Latin teacher(I don't know why I had to take Latin at the age of six in the first grade, but it was fun anyways) so I had hopes that it wouldn't go bad and that Percy wouldn't die of boredom.

Mr. Brunner was this middle-aged guy in a wheelchair. He had thinning hair and a scruffy beard and a frayed tweed jacket, which always smelled like coffee. You wouldn't think he'd be cool(at first sight you might think he's crazy or belongs in an asylum maybe or both), but he told stories(a lot of really cool stories mind you), and jokes(jokes that actually made you laugh and that weren't crappy like most teachers jokes were)**(A/N And trust me, I know from experience)**, and let us play games(not video games but still pretty sweet) in class. He also had this awesome collection of Roman(or Greek?) armor and weapons(which looked really cool), so he was the only teacher whose class didn't make me want to leave and go to bed or something.

I hoped this trip would be okay. At least, I hoped that for once I wouldn't get in trouble.

Dang, was I wrong(read: terribly, horribly wrong, on like ten different levels.)

See, bad things happen to me on fieldtrips. Like last year at my kindergarten school, we went to the Saratoga battlefield, I had this accident with one of the Revolutionary War muskets. I wasn't aiming for the school bus( I was aiming at this teenage looking girl that kept following me and eyeing Percy, but I got a really bad feeling from her, and I don't know what came over me but I grabbed the musket and shot at her, and she so happened to be in front of the bus, and then she burst into flame and had fangs and what looked like a donkey leg and metal leg and then disappeared, and when I told Percy about her later he said he hadn't seen her, but I'd been sure she was there), but I got expelled anyways, along with Percy for shooting the bus with a Revolutionary War cannon.

And before that, at my pre-k, when we took a behind-the-scenes tour of the Marine World shark pool, I sort of hit the wrong lever on the catwalk at one end of it while Percy the other, and our class's took an unplanned swim( I'm pretty sure the sharks talked to us cause I could hear them in my head like I could all the other animals, cause I still hadn't crossed over and I hoped I'd never cross over, which meant I could still talk to animals and understand them, could understand the stars, knew we weren't alone in the universe, that there was something else out there, and that I could still see the supernatural and understand them and try to help them.) That's all that's happened to get me kicked out of schools so far, but I knew more expulsions would happen.

This trip, I was determined to be good.

All the way into the city, I put up with Nancy Bobofit, the freckly, red-headed, kleptomaniac psycho, and the big sister of one of the many bullies I somehow collected without doing a thing to them, hitting my best friend Grover in the back of the head with chunks of peanut butter-and-ketchup(don't ask, don't know) sandwich.

Grover was an easy target. He was scrawny. He cried when he got frustrated. He must've been held back several grades because he was the only sixth-grader with acne and the start of a wispy beard on his chin. On top of all that, he was crippled.

He had a note excusing him from PE for the rest of his life because he had some kind of muscular disease in his legs. He walked funny, like every step hurt him, but don't let that fool you. You should've seen him run when it was enchilada day in the cafeteria(just in case you're in his way when he's running towards the line, I suggest you get out of his way unless you want to be road kill.)

Anyways, Nancy Bobofit was throwing wads of sandwich that stuck in his curly brown hair, and she knew I couldn't do anything back to her, nor could Percy, because we were already on probation. The headmaster had threatened us with death by in school suspension and two three hour long lectures, if anything bad, embarrassing, or even mildly entertaining happened on this trip.

"I'm going to kill her," Percy and I said in unison, although I didn't really mean it, because I could tell that she was innocent, and that she just wanted attention because her parents didn't really have time to give her attention, which was why she was stuck here, the same with Shiley, but it still hurt when Shiley called me names, to make herself feel better, along with everybody else in first grade. And I could tell Percy didn't really mean it too, but it didn't mean we wouldn't scare her as revenge for doing that to Grover.

Grover tried to calm us down. "It's okay. I like peanut butter."

"_But with ketchup, Grover?" _I said.

"It's _okay." _Grover said again, trying to calm us down, but it didn't help much.

I turned back around in my seat, huffed, and glared softly at the seat in front of me, but I was still paying attention to Percy, Grover, and Nancy.

He dodged another piece of Nancy's lunch.

I watched to see what Percy's reaction would be.

"That's it," he said, and started to get up, but Grover pulled him back down to his seat. When I saw that I started to get up and turn around from my seat. Grover pulled me back down into my seat, too.

"You guys are already on probation," he reminded us. "You know who'd get blamed if anything happens."

Looking back on it, I wish I'd decked Nancy with Percy like he wanted to, right then and there(maybe I should go back and do that.)

ISS would've been nothing compared to the mess(the danger) I was about to get myself into.

Mr. Brunner led the museum tour.

He rode up front in his wheelchair, guiding us through the big echoey galleries, past marble statues and glass cases full of really old black-and-orange pottery. My head whipped back and forth, my hip length, jet black colored hair flying, my sea green eyes drinking in every little detail.

It blew my mind that this stuff had survived for two thousand, three thousand years or longer. I could tell that Percy's mind was blown, too.

He gathered us around a thirteen-foot-tall stone column with a big sphinx on the top, and started telling us how it was a grave marker, a _stele_, for a girl about Percy's age. Then two images flashed in my head all of a sudden, like it sometimes happened. The first one was of a boy with messy brown hair, one calf brown eye in the middle of his forehead, with a big peanut butter toothed grin, he was enormous and strong, I could tell. A name flashed through my mind, _Tyson_, and I could tell that he was harmless and even with his size that he was only about seven to eight years old, and I felt some type of connection to him. The second was of two shrouds being burned, they were sea green with tridents painted on them. These images flashed through my mind in a half second and left me confused, like the visions I got usually did.

He continued to tell us about the carvings on the sides. Percy and I were trying to listen to what he had to say, cause it was interesting, but everyone around us kept talking, and every time I told one of my classmates to shut up, the other elementary school chaperone, Mrs. Electric, would give me the evil eye. When Percy saw that, he got a protective look in his eyes, and moved himself closer to me without realizing it. Each time Percy told one of his classmates to shut up, the other middle school chaperone, Mrs. Dodds, would give him the evil eye.

He'd been a lot more watchful of me ever since the stapler incident and a lot more protective of me since the snake incident.

Back to the school trip. Mrs. Electric was this little ELA teacher from Georgia who always wore a leather jacket, even though she was fifty years old. She looked mean enough to drive a Harley into your locker(and countless other things.) She had come to Yancy halfway into the school year, when our last ELA teacher had a nervous breakdown.

From her first day, Mrs. Electric loved Shiley Bobofit and figured I was devil spawn. She would point her crooked finger at me and say "Now, sweetie," real sweet, and I knew I was going to get recess detention for a month. Mrs. Dodds would be like that with Percy, except she loved Nancy, called him honey, she was a math teacher, and he was given afterschool detention. Mrs. Electric and Mrs. Dodds looked the exact same and Percy and I swore they were twins.

One time, she made me erase answers from old grammar textbooks for a whole month during recess detention. After school, I went to visit Percy and Grover in their dorm room one day, and found out he had after school detention, we waited and he got back at midnight. We told Grover that we didn't think they were human. He looked at us real serious and said "You're absolutely right."(He was absolutely right, of course.)

Mr. Brunner kept talking about Greek funeral art.

Finally, Nancy Bobofit snickered something about the naked guy on the stele(and I'm sure I was the only one that heard that she wished it were Percy, which kind of disturbed me), and then Percy turned around and said "Will you _shut up!?"_

It came out louder than he meant it to.

The whole group, except for Grover and I, laughed. Mr. Brunner stopped his story.

"Mr. Jackson," he said, "did you have a comment?"

His face was totally red, making the usually unnoticable freckles spattered across his nose and cheeks very noticable, as he said "No, sir."

I looked around and saw both girls and boys staring at him, trying to keep from having their mouths hanging open and drooling. He didn't know it, but all the girls and guys had crushes on him. It did help that he had learned to reverse some type of curse or something that had been put on us, cause if not, everybody except me, Grover, and the people that had known us for pretty much forever, would've been slobbering all over him and the first graders all over me, but it just barely helped.

Mr. Brunner pointed to one of the pictures on the stele. "Perhaps you'll tell us what the picture represents?"

I knew he was mentally sighing at this moment. He looked at the carving and I saw relief flood his eyes because he actually recognized it. "That's Kronos eating his kids, right?" he said.

"Yes," Mr. Brunner said, obviously not satisfied(he's never satisfied with us.)

"And he _did_ this _because…"_

"Well, Kronos was the king god-,"

"Titan," I quickly whisper to him, trying to correct his error, as soon as he said god.

"And-" he continues.

"God?" Mr. Brunner asked.

"Titan," he corrected himself, getting what I meant when I said titan. "And he didn't trust his kids, who were the gods. So, um, Kronos ate them , right? But his wife hid baby Zeus, and gave him a rock to eat instead. And later, when Zeus grew up, he tricked his dad, Kronos, into barfing up his brothers and sisters-"

"Eeew," said one of the girls behind me(Awesome!)

"-and there was this big fight in between the gods and the titans," he continued, "and the gods won."

Some snickers from the group. I don't understand why, though. I mean, he did get it right.

Behind me, Nancy Bobofit mumbled to a friend, "Like we're going to use this in real life. Like it's going to say on our job applications, 'please explain why Kronos ate his kids.'"(*sigh* If only it did, then my life would be a whole lot easier.)

"And why, Mr. Jackson," Mr. Brunner said, "to paraphrase Miss Bobofit's excellent question, does it matter in real life?"

'_How the hell do you expect him to know!?' _I wondered. Like seriously, how did he expect him to know? And I know that at the age of six, I shouldn't know about curse words or how to use them, but I did, and it isn't from anything good.

"Busted," Grover and I muttered in unison, though.

"Shut up," Nancy hissed, her face even brighter red then her hair.

At least Nancy got packed, too. Mr. Brunner was the only one who ever caught her or Shiley saying anything wrong. He had radar ears.

Percy looked like he was thinking about the question, although I knew he really wasn't, I knew him too well, I mean how do you expect him to know the answer to that question? He shrugged. "I don't know, sir."

"I see," Mr. Brunner looked disappointed. "Well, half credit, Mr. Jackson. Zeus did indeed feed Kronos a mixture of mustard and wine, which made him disgorge his other five children, who, of course, being immortal gods, had been living and growing up completely undigested in the Titan's stomach. The gods defeated their father, sliced him to pieces with his own scythe, and scattered his remains in Tartarus, the darkest part of the Underworld. On that happy note, it's time for lunch. Mrs. Dodds, would you lead us back outside?"

The class drifted off, all the girls except for me holding their stomachs, and the guys pushing each other like doofuses.

Percy, Grover, and I were about to follow when Mr. Brunner said, "Mr. Jackson."

I knew that was coming for Percy, and I could tell he saw it coming, too.

He told us to keep going. So we went outside and sat on the fountain to wait.

The class was gathered on the front steps of the museum, where we could watch the foot traffic along Fifth Avenue, which, I know, is really interesting, right(note the sarcasm.)

Overhead, a huge storm was brewing, with clouds blacker than I'd ever seen over the city. I figured it was global warming or something, which I didn't really like to hear about. I mean, you couldn't see the stars in cities because of pollution and could only see them in the country, and even then I knew that those stars weren't all of them, that there were still many covered by the pollution, and then there was the litter. I swear, people don't care about anyone but themselves nowadays, and care for not one thing around them, even the earth that they walk on, and it makes me sick. And don't even get me started about the pollution in the rivers, oceans, and the streams, and all other sources of water out there. Anyways, sorry about my rant and now back to the story. The weather all across New York State had been weird since Christmas.

We'd had massive snow storms, flooding, wildfires from lightning strikes(which didn't really freak me out, it actually calmed me, but it's the bad dreams that make me end up with me in Percy's dorm room cuddled up to him with my blankie and Mr. Buttons, my teddy bear, both given to me by Percy when I was still a newborn and have had them ever since.) I wouldn't be surprised if this was a hurricane coming in, which meant that I might end up in Percy's room tonight, in my light blue nightgown with my blankie and Mr. Buttons.

Nobody else seemed to notice but me.

Percy came out a second later.

I commented on the storm, and he nodded, meaning he'd noticed it, too. We started to eat our lunch and I looked around. Some of the guys were pelting pigeons with Lunchables crackers, which you don't know how mad that made me. I mean, seriously, what did they do to you? All their doing is minding their own business. I bet you wouldn't like it if you were those pigeons reason. Nancy and Shiley Bobofit were trying to pickpocket something from some lady's purses, and, of course, Mrs. Electric wasn't seeing a thing, and neither was Mrs. Dodds.

Percy, Grover, and I sat on the edge of the fountain, away from the others. We thought that if we did that, everybody wouldn't know we were from _that_ school-the school for loser freaks who have no chance of making it elsewhere.

"Detention?" Grover and I ask, though it's highly unlikely.

"Nah," he said. "Not from Brunner. I just wish he'd lay off me sometimes. I mean-I'm not a genius."

"You got that right," I said, teasingly, slightly pushing my bangs out of my eyes.

"Oh, ha, ha very funny," he says back to me sarcastically.

Ah, sarcasm. I swear Percy has got to be the king of it with how much sarcasm he uses.

Grover didn't say anything for a while. Then, when we thought he was going to give Percy some deep philosophical comment to make him feel better , he said, "Can I have your apple?" Which is so like him, I can't help but laugh. Percy didn't have much of an appetite, so he let him take it, which is crazy since I swear with as much as he eats, he could feed ten people, and I'm not kidding. But I couldn't say anything, since I was the same. I was still laughing, and laughed for at least a full minute. Then I snorted and started to laugh again. I'm so easily amused, you could say one word and I'd probably burst out laughing. They just watched me with amused smiles, Grover still eating his apple, and then I calmed down enough to eat again.

I watched the stream of cabs going down Fifth Avenue, and thought about my mommy's apartment, only a little ways uptown from where we sat. I hadn't seen her since Christmas. I wanted so bad to jump in a taxi and head home. She'd hug me and be glad to see me, but she'd be disappointed, too. She'd send me right back to Yancy, remind me that I had to try harder, even if this was my second school in two years and I was probably going to be kicked out again, which would probably be a record for a six year old, I wouldn't be able to stand that sad look she'd give me. It's that kind of look parent's give their kids when they think that they're failing at raising their children and then deem themselves failures for life. But I didn't want to see Uncle Jeff, which kinda sorta adopted me since Percy's stepdad wouldn't let me live there, even though I was legally adopted by my Mommy and Percy(we looked so alike we might as well be blood related siblings), Uncle Jeff was the person that gave me the simple needs a kid would need, but that was just the cover of him, nobody knew what he was really like accept for me, and I hope Percy and Mommy never found out, cause Mommy would be distraught and Percy would try to kill him. Which I didn't want to happen, no matter what he'd done to me, or what he was going to do to me, and no matter what I would always love him. I didn't have the heart to hate anyone, or to even dislike someone. I either loved or liked everyone, no matter what they'd done to me or not. Or what they'd done or what they were going to in their life. I easily forgave no matter for what it was. I instantly forgave someone for what they did, no matter how wrong.

I was about to unwrap my sandwich when Nancy and Shiley Bobofit appeared in front of us with their friends-I guess Nancy and Shiley had gotten tired of stealing from the tourists-and dumped their half-eaten lunch's in Grover's lap.

"Oops," they grinned at us with their crooked teeth. Their freckles were orange, as if somebody had spray-painted their face's with liquid Cheetos.

I was able to hold my cool, but Percy wasn't. I looked over at him just as he lost it.

Rage filled his sea green eyes, turning them such a dark shade of green they almost looked black, his jaws clenched together and his hands balled into fists. Then, all of a sudden, the water from the fountain leapt out of the fountain, grabbed Nancy by the waist and threw her down into the fountain, soaking her down, and it only took a second for the whole thing to happen.

Percy didn't really know what had happened, and neither did I. But the next thing Nancy did as soon as she had regained her senses, was scream "Percy pushed me!"

Shiley whispered to one of her friends, but not softly enough, because I heard it clearly. "OMG, Percy is such a freak!" And at those words, I lost it.

My mind went blank. A wave roared in my ears.

I don't remember touching her, but the next thing I knew, Shiley was sitting on her butt in the fountain, screaming "Mistle pushed me!"

'_We're freakin' fifteen feet away! How could we have pushed you two into the fountain' _I screamed in my head.

Mrs. Electric and Mrs. Dodds materialized next to us.

Some of the kids were whispering:

"Did you see-"

"-the water-"

"-like it grabbed them-"

I didn't know what they were talkin about, and I could tell Percy didn't either. The only thing that both of us knew was that we were in trouble again.

As soon as Mrs. Electric was sure poor little Shiley was okay and Mrs. Dodds poor little Nancy, promising to get them new shirts at the museum gift shop, etc., etc., Mrs. Electric turned on me and Mrs. Dodds on Percy. There was a triumphant fire in her eyes, as if we'd done something they'd been waiting for all semester. "Now, sweetie-," Mrs. Electric said to me as Mrs. Dodds said to Percy, "Now, honey-."

"I know," we grumbled. "A month erasing textbooks," I said as Percy said, "A month erasing workbooks."

That wasn't the right thing to say to the either of them(it never is.)

"Come with me," said the teachers in unison.

"Wait!" Grover yelped. "It was me. _I _pushed them."

I stared at him, stunned, as did Percy. Neither of us could believe he was trying to cover for us. Mrs. Electric scared him to death(even if he didn't personally have her) as did Mrs. Dodds, they scared Grover to death. This is why I loved Grover(although it took until mid-January for me to completely trust him, but I still kept my walls up, like I did with everyone, even Percy and Triton and Mommy, for certain reasons of mine), he protected me as much as he could, like Percy did, and Triton, which was my babysitter, but was like a big brother, and all three of us looked so alike, we could've passed for brother and sister without a problem. But back to Grover. He was such a good brother that way.

They glared at him so hard his whiskery chin trembled.

"I don't think so, Mr. Underwood," they said.

"But-"

"You-_will-_stay-here."

Grover looked at us desperately.

"It's okay, man," we told him. "Thanks for trying."

"Sweetie," Mrs. Electric barked at me while Mrs. Electric barked at Percy, "Honey."

"_Now."_

Nancy and Shiley Bobofit smirked.

We gave them our deluxe I'll-kill-you-later stares. Although I didn't mean it, but I didn't know about Percy, though. Some people said I was _too_ nice sometimes, until it came to protecting my family and friends, then I'd do anything at all, even if it meant hurting someone, which was way out of my nature. I didn't really like violence, for very specific reasons, which nobody but me knew about.

Then we turned to face our teachers, but they weren't there. They were standing at the museum entrance, way at the top of the steps, gesturing impatiently at us to come on.

How'd they get there so fast?

I have moments like that a lot, when my brain falls asleep or something, and the next thing I know I've missed something, as if a puzzle piece of the universe and left me staring at the blank place behind it. Some of the doctors say it's because of the accident that happened when I was three years old, or the chip in my head keeping me from being blind, deaf, and mute for a few seconds**(A/N: Let's pretend that exists for certain story purposes of mine, but I know that there's one for deaf people that actually exists)**, but I can see and hear anyways, and talk without it, because I could feel the vibrations in the earth and the air, which let me know what people were saying and what they were about to do or where objects were or if something was coming my way on the ground or in the air, which I learned to do when I was very young**(A/N: It's going to help that she's like this and that she can do it later in the story)**, and I know sign language and Morse code. Percy and Triton are the only ones that know about that other than Mommy and Uncle Jeff. The other doctors say it's the ADHD. They're not actually sure which one it is. I'm pretty sure Percy felt that way, too, though.

I wasn't so sure, and neither was Percy.

We went after our teachers.

Halfway up the steps, Percy and I looked back at Grover. He was looking pale, cutting his eyes between us and Mr. Brunner, like he wanted him to realize what was going on, but Mr. Brunner was absorbed in his novel.

We looked back up, Mrs. Electric and Mrs. Dodds had disappeared again. They were now inside the building, at the end of the entrance hall.

Okay, I thought. They're going to make us buy new shirts for Nancy and Shiley at the gift shop.

But apparently that wasn't the plan.

I was led deep into the museum, into a part way in the back being renovated, while Percy was led away from me, but I don't know where.

I followed Mrs. Electric, even deeper than I'd thought we'd go, past the place being renovated, and way in the back of the museum.

Except for us, this part of the museum was empty.

Mrs. Electric stood with her arms crossed, back to me, and she was making this weird noise in her throat, like growling.

Even without the noise, I would've been nervous. It's weird being alone with a teacher, especially Mrs. Electric, and the fact that I didn't really like being alone with adults…

"You've been giving us problems, sweetie," she said.

I did my usual response to her, I said, "Yes, ma'am."

She tugged on the cuffs of her leather jacket. "Did you really think you would get away with it?"

The look in her eyes was beyond mad. It was evil.

She's a teacher, I thought nervously. It's not like she's going to hurt. But I wasn't so sure, and I could already feel the fear seizing my heart like an iron fist, my breath coming and going faster, making it harder to catch.

I said, "I'll-I'll try harder, ma'am," with a shaky voice.

Thunder shook the building.

"Now listen, Mistle Jackson," she said in an actually sweet and caring sounding voice, furthering my nerves and fear, making it harder for me to catch my breath, because her voice made me think of memories I'd rather forget. "Confess and things shall be easier."

I didn't know what she was talking about, and her tone kept furthering perplexing me.

All I could think was that the teacher's had found the illegal stash of candy I'd been selling out of my dorm room with Percy. Or she was on something that I hadn't seen how someone would act if they took it, but it was highly doubtful. I would know.

"Well?" she demanded.

"Ma'am, I don't…"

"Your time is up," she hissed.

Then the weirdest thing happened. Her eyes began to glow like barbecue coals. Her fingers stretched, turning into talons. Her jacket melted into large, leathery wings. She wasn't human. She was a shriveled hag with bat wings, and she was about to slice me to ribbons.

Then things got even stranger.

Mr. Brunner, who'd been out in front of the museum a minute before, wheeled his chair into the doorway of the gallery, holding a charm bracelet in his hand.

"What ho, Mistle," he shouted, and tossed the bracelet through the air.

Mrs. Electric lunged at me.

With a yelp, I dodged and felt talons slash the air next to my ear, almost grabbing my hair, blowing my bangs away from my face. I snatched the charm bracelet out of the air, but when it hit my hand, it wasn't a bracelet anymore. It was a sword- but I felt like I knew it, almost like it was a lost part of me.

Mrs. Electric spun toward me with a murderous look in her eyes.

My knees were jelly. My hands were shaking so bad I almost dropped the sword.

She snarled, "Die, honey!"

And she flew straight at me.

Absolute terror ran through my body. I did the only thing that came naturally: I swung the sword.

The metal blade hit her shoulder and passed clean through her body as if she were made of water. _Hisss!_

Mrs. Electric was a sand castle in a power fan. She exploded into yellow powder, vaporized on the spot, leaving nothing but the smell of sulfur and a dying screech and a chill of evil in the air, as if those two glowing red eyes were still watching me.

I was alone.

There was a charm bracelet in my hand.

Mr. Brunner wasn't there. Nobody was there but me.

My hands were still trembling. My lunch must've been contaminated with dope or something.

Had I imagined the whole thing?

I went back outside.

It had started to rain, which made me slightly calm down.

Percy and Grover were sitting by the fountain, a museum map was tented over Grover's head. Shiley and Nancy Bobofit were standing on opposite sides of the fountain, both still soaked from their swim, grumbling to their friends. When Shiley saw me, she said, "I hope Mrs. Dubbs whipped your butt."

I said, "Who?"

"Our _teacher._ Duh!"

I blinked. We had no teacher named Mrs. Dubbs. I asked Shiley what she was talking about.

She just rolled her eyes and turned away.

I asked Grover where Mrs. Electric was.

He said, "Who?"

But he paused first, and he wouldn't look at me, so I thought he was messing with me, and anyways, I could tell apart a lie from the truth when I heard one.

"Not funny, Grover," I told him. "This is serious."

Thunder boomed overhead. It made me calmer.

I asked Percy the same question. He said he didn't know where she was. At least he told the truth. I also knew that I hadn't made up Mrs. Electric.

I saw Mr. Brunner sitting under his red umbrella, reading his book, as if he'd never moved.

I went over to him.

He looked up, a little distracted. "Ah, that would be my charm bracelet(it was a gift his daughter had given him before she left to go live in another state, but he had no pictures of her in class, so I guess he had them all at home, but he brought the bracelet to class, and always took it with him, wherever he went.) Thank you for finding it and returning it to me, Miss Jackson."

I handed Mr. Brunner the bracelet. I hadn't even realized I was still holding it.

"Sir," I said, "where's Mrs. Electric?"

He stared at me blankly. "Who?" But I could tell he was lying.

"The other teacher chaperone. Mrs. Electric. The ELA teacher."

He frowned and sat forward, looking mildly concerned. "Mistle, there is no Mrs. Electric on this field trip. As far as I know, there has never been a Mrs. Electric at Yancy Academy. Are you feeling alright?"

I told him I must've just imagined it and went to sit back down by Percy and Grover.

I was still confused.

Then I leaned into Percy and whispered in his ear, to where I was sure he was the only one that could hear me and said, "I'm confused, and there's something fishy goin on here."

He whispered back to me, "I'm confused, too, and there is something goin on." And with that, our conversation ended.

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**Sooooooo… Love it, hate it. Remember I do take flames and ideas. I'll probably update later today with a little snippet chapter that goes in between every two chapters. And again sorry for the late update!**

**Until next time, this is Mistle11411 signing out.**


	4. Behind The Scene 1

**A/N: Okay my snippet chaps are going to be like this, and remember to please review and I do take flames and ideas.**

**Disclaimer: I don't and never will own PJO, it all belongs to Rick Riordan.**

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_~Hades' castle~ Third person P.O.V.~_

"You have defied my orders again, Alecto and Megaera," Hades said his face a mask of calm but his eyes glowing with anger. Alecto and Megaera were shaking in fear as they watched their master glower at them from where he sat.

"I specifically told you not to threaten or harm the boy and girl." He continued "Why did you attack them?"

Alecto and Megaera swallowed before continuing in unison "Forgive us my lord. They showed fear and as you know we thrive on fear and we got a little carried away an-"

"'A little carried away?" Hades jumped up bellowing. "If Chiron hadn't of shown up when he did you would have surely killed them! What would you have told me then? That you got 'a little carried away'?" taking deep breaths to calm down he sat and continued trembling with the anger he was trying to hide. "I told you to question the boy and girl to see if they're the ones responsible for the disappearance of my helm and Zeus' lightning bolt. Be glad that they aren't dead, and if you ever try to harm them again I will not hesitate in torturing you for the rest of your lives. Now get out."

Alecto and Megaera immediately left the room, thanking the fates that they had not been tortured. Hades just sighed and sank lower into his seat. The threat that the fates had given him was still fresh in his mind, yet he couldn't break his promise he made to his baby brother. Sure he was younger, by like, seven minutes, but he would always consider Poseidon his baby brother. Also, he knew that the girl was special, or else he wouldn't have given her his blessing when she was just a small baby. He sighed for the umpteenth time wondering what he should do.

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**And scene! So I hope this was okay and don't forget to review on my question at the bottom of my last chapter, and they get mentioned if they get it right in my next chappie!**

**Till next time, this is Mistle11411 signing out.**


	5. 3 Ladies Knit the Socks of Death

**A/N: Okay here's my next chapter I hope you enjoy it. Remember I do take flames and ideas. And please review! I know that Mistle and Percy would want you to! I've also posted a few one shots that go with this story and I was hoping you read them, too, by the way. Just so you know. Sorry for the late update!**

**Merry (late) Christmas!**

**Disclaimer: I don't own and never will own PJO, it all belongs to Rick Riordan.**

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Percy's POV

To say that I was confused was the fuckin' understatement of the century. Every time I asked someone about Mrs. Dodds, each and every person looked at me like I was insane. Instead, ther was this really perky teacher that had the name Mrs. Kerr. Where the hell did she come from? After a while of constant questioning, I started to believe them. Mrs. Dodds never existed. That was, until I asked Grover.

"Hey, G-man," I jogged up to him between classes, "What happened to Mrs. Dodds?"

Now, if he'd answered 'Who?,' I might have signed myself into an Insane Asylum. He hesitated, though. As if thinking about the answer that would suit me best.

"N-no idea who you're talking about," he answered. He stuttered. Stuttering is a wonderful sign that he's lying.

I narrowed my eyes at him. "This isn't funny, Grover. What happened to Mrs. Dodds? C'mon, tell me."

Before he could answer me, the bell rang, signaling that we had to get to class. He muttered a "Sorry. Got to go. You know, class," and then he limped away. I sighed. This was getting frustrating. There WAS a Mrs. Dodds. I know it. I just had no way to prove it. Better yet, Mistle was also frustrated because people kept saying that Mrs. Electric didn't exist, and we were pretty sure she did. I shook my head in defeat and walked to my class.

As the month went on, I became restless and grumpy, as did Mistle, which is a bad thing since she's mostly always tired and awake, which meant something was wrong, but I didn't know what. During the time, the news kept constantly talking about the freak weather. Planes were getting hit in the Atlantic, getting hit by random storms and almost immediately going down. Chicago city was experiencing the worst lightning storm the country had ever faced. A few days ago, a tornado touched down just a few miles away from our school.

My grades took a turn for the worse going from Ds to Fs pretty quickly, and Mistle"s grades went down from all As to low Bs and Cs, which was a pretty good sign that something was wrong with Mistle, and each time I asked she would just say that it was getting harder, I believed her though, because I knew she wouldn't lie to me if something was wrong.. I was sent out into the hall in almost every class, whether it was from picking fights with Nancy Bobofit or snapping at teachers. Finally, I snapped and called my English teacher an old sot. I don't know what it meant, but it sounded like it fit him perfectly.

I was sent to the office faster than I could blink. They showed me the letter that they would be sending to my mom. Your son, Perseus Jackson, blah, blah, blah disrupting class and acting juvenile blah, blah, blah is being disrespectful to teachers and staff BLAH, BLAH, BLAH he will not be allowed to attend this school next year. But I could care less. I was sick of this school, I missed my mom, and I just wanted to go home. I wouldn't mind going, even if I had to put up with my jackass of a stepfather.

There would be things I missed about this school though. Mr. Brunner and his crazy awesome way of teaching and his faith that I could do well, as well as Grover. I would miss him most of all, even if he was a little strange.

I had less than a month left of school and as the end drew nearer I couldn't help but feel anxious. Something was going to happen, something big. Unfortunately, I had no idea what it was going to be. I just hoped it would happen soon. The suspense was leaving me feeling like I had to throw up.

To make matters worse, I couldn't sleep at night because of the nightmares that plagued my mind each and every night since Mrs. Dodds had attacked me, though I had a feeling I'd had them before. Each day it was a different one. The first one was of a little boy that looked Latino with black curly hair and elfish, troublemaker features. It would start off with his mom and him in what I guessed was her workshop. They would be locking up for the night but the mom would accidently forget her keys, and she'd go get them and leave the boy at the front of the shop. The door leading to the workshop would close and lock itself, separating the little boy and his mother. Then a woman would rise from the ground a few feet in front of the boy, and scare him. He'd stumble back, and yet the woman would still walk forward. Then the boys hands would light on fire, all by themselves, and the whole shop would be engulfed in flames, and the little boy would somehow make it out, but the mother always died in the flames in the back of the workshop.

The next night I dreamt of a small Indian child running for his life, his dad behind him urging him to run faster. His dad trips and the boy doesn't realize it until he hears his father's scream as whatever beast was chasing them started tearing into him. The boy turned to run back to him but his father convinced him to go. So the child went the site of his father being devoured probably scaring him for life. Both of those children couldn't have been more than eight.

The next night I dreamt of a small, blond haired, blue eyed child that couldn't have been more than two at the least. It would start with the little boy crying and screaming for someone named Lia, and being taken away by wolves. Then it would fade away to a forest scene. The little boy would be fighting the wolves, a wolf would sneak up behind the boy, and pounce on him before the boy could react. Then the other wolves would pounce as well. I would always force myself awake on this one. It was bad enough watching a kid's parent getting burned or mauled, but to see a helpless child get eaten. I got sick just thinking about it.

Unfortunately, it didn't stop there; instead I had to go through more nightmares. Each leaving me worse than before. I dreamed of a girl and her mother drowning in tar, a woman's voice yelling and cursing, saying something about having only delayed the rise of, and then I'd lose what she was saying. Then I'd hear her say to them, always before waking up, 'You will not escape me.'

The next nightmare is of a boy and girl playing on the floor at their father's feet. I immediately have a sense of dread, and, a moment later, my feeling is confirmed when their father cries out, 'NO!' and the house explodes, rattling my teeth.

The next night, I see a girl, about eight or so, with bright, blood red hair and lightly tanned skin. She's on a picnic with her dad. She gets angry with her father and screams at him. He screams back with just as much fire. I don't know what they are saying but that feeling of dread is back. There is no explosion, instead the ground starts to shake and it opens up. The fissure spreads quickly towards the little girl and her father. The argument is forgotten, and the father's paternal instincts kick in, shoving his daughter out of harm's way. The earth opens beneath his feet and he starts to fall. The girl screams again, this time in despair, and the ground suddenly closes up. Unfortunately, it closes right on the man's legs. I wake up to the sound of his pain-filled scream.

The worst one is the last one, in this nerve-racking cycle. Another girl, this time with raven colored hair and shocking blue eyes around my age, is running with two blondes and a brunette, the blondes, a boy and a little girl, who are possibly siblings, the brunette, a girl, being carried, because the girl couldn't have been more than one or one and a half years old, by the blond boy. Behind them are these creatures thirsting for blood. Ahead of them, urging them on is another creature who looks oddly familiar. The raven-haired girl convinces them to keep going, and she bravely faces the monsters. They surround her. Lightning flashes followed by a jaw-rattling BOOM! and I shoot up, wide awake, every single time.

Then the cycle of dreams would repeat, and no matter how much I saw them, they still left me shivering in fear and feeling nauseous. I felt that these people were important. I couldn't begin to understand it, let alone explain it, but it was like I had a... connection to them. Like, we were all connected somehow in an unforeseen bond, maybe? I don't know. And for some reason it felt like I had seen them all before, and knew who they were, but I couldn't _quite_ place it, for some reason.

I thought of all of this as I read the note. As I finished reading the note and I put it down, I heard the door open in the Elementary office, and looked towards it. What I saw shocked me. It was Mistle being held by one of her triceps by her science teacher, and forcefully being sat down on one of the chairs. The teacher was probably telling her to sit down and to not move. Mistle made a comment that the teacher didn't like, I reckon, because the teacher stormed out to get the Principal. I finally got a good look at Mistle, since the teacher had been blocking most of her from where she was standing. Her hair was messy, which was unusual, since she always made sure it was straight before heading to class, she had dark circles under her eyes, which shouldn't have been there, considering she was six, and there was a bit of paint, oil pastels, and marker on her face, too. She looked paler than usual, and her clothes was messy and wrinkled and had paint splattered on it, oil pastels smeared on it, marker on it, too, and a few other types of paints or colors or whatever they're called on her clothes. She also had a jacket on, even though it was a little warm. Her hands were covered in the paints as well. In all, she looked like a hot mess, which she pretty much never looked like that, and I usually made sure of that. She looked straight in front of her, and had her arms crossed over her chest, glaring at the desk, and looking like she was about to cry from either frustration or anger or both, but she blinked them back, and then I was escorted out, and the last sight I had of her was the Elementary school Principal coming in, and her still in the same position as before, before I lost sight of her. I didn't get to see her for the rest of the day.

A few hours later, I was in my dorm room studying for my Latin test. Or at least trying. It wasn't like it was hard to understand, matter of fact, Latin was my strong suit, like Greek was somehow, as was Irish for, some reason. It was just that after a while my brain would hurt and I can't keep still for the life of me. Not to mention the fact that I know this stuff already. I don't know how or why, but it just clicks in my head. The only reason why even bothered trying to study was to keep myself occupied and because, knowing my luck (or lack of it), I would fail the test because of some stupid mistake with the translating. I had already given up on my other classes, resigning myself as a failure, but I wasn't about to give up on Mr. Brunner. The last thing I needed was for him to think me a failure. That, and, for some odd reason, I started to believe him when he said that my life would depend on his class and lessons, as well as Mistle's.

Growling in frustration, I chucked the _Cambridge Guide to Greek Mythology_ across the dorm. It hit the wall with a satisfying THUD. My head was killing me and I just wanted to scream. It felt like ants were crawling all over me as I sat on the edge of my bed, head in my hands. I got up and the room suddenly got hot and my vision started going dark. I sat back down, breathing hard. The room was uncomfortably hot, as if I were cooking in Hell, so I decided to take a risk and leave; I could use some fresh air. I grabbed my textbook and took it with me. Who knows, maybe I'll be able to study correctly under the moon, the occasional breeze cooling me on this humid night. If I got caught, I could always say that I was discussing the upcoming exam I have with Mr. Brunner. They may not believe me, but, hey, what evidence did they have that would make me a liar?

I slipped out of my room unnoticed and went on my way. The closest exit was down the stairs. The exit leads to one of the tunnels that connect the school to the dorms, which is usually what Mistle used to sneak into my dorm room at night. I could go through the fire escape doors, but that would set off the fire alarm and all my plans of being incognito would be out the door. I reached the door and took a deep breath. Here was the tricky part. The tunnel doors open manually, thank God, but, not only do they close with a loud click, each side of the tunnel has a door and the tunnel is long. Anyone could open the door, from either side, and see me. There are no hiding places in the tunnel so if I get caught I'm screwed. I would hopefully be able to use my excuse but, knowing my [lack of] luck, I wouldn't count on it. Taking another deep breath, I entered the tunnel. For once luck was on my side. I got in and out of the tunnel without a stitch and was finally on my way to freedom. I decided to go down the language/history hall, where Mr. Brunner's classroom was located. Make my alibi seem believable. As I was entering the hall, a little blur flew into me, making me trip and backwards and almost fall down, and the blur fell backwards. I regained my balance and looked at the person on the floor in front of me. The person shook their head and looked up at me, their sea green eyes looking up at me fearfully. I gave a sigh of relief for having been the one to find her, and no one else.

"Mistle, what are you doing here," I said.

"I was going outside to get some air," she said. "I brought my textbook to say that I was going to see if Mr. Brunner could help me if I get caught."

I smiled and said, "C'mon, let's go outside together, then, since that's what I was going to do."

"Okay," she said, glad that she didn't get in trouble.

Everything was going good until I heard something that made my heart skip a beat.

"-worried about Mistle and Percy, sir" I heard Grover say. And by Mistle's sharp intake of breath, I could tell she'd heard, too.

Now, normally, I don't eavesdrop on people, but I dare you to not listen when your friend is telling a teacher that he was worried about you. Pressing myself against the wall, I moved closer to the door, and Mistle did the same.

"... alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, _two_ Kindly One's in the _school_! Now that we know for sure, and _they _know too—"

"We would only make matters worse by rushing them," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy and girl to mature more."

"But they may not have time. The summer solstice dead line—"

"Will have to be resolved without them, Grover. Let them enjoy their ignorance while they still can."

"Sir, they _saw _them..."

"Their imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince them of that."

"Sir, I ... I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."

"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Mistle and Percy alive until next fall—"

The mythology books dropped out of our hands and hit the floor with two thuds.

Mr. Brunner went silent.

A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than our wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.

My heart hammering, I picked up my textbook while Mistle picked up hers, we backed down the hall, and quietly slid into the closest door to us, which happened to be the janitor's closet.

Clop, clop, clop, clop. Hooves? OK. I was definitely going crazy.

"I must've misheard something." Mr. Brunner's voice rang through the silence. He sighed. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."

"Mine neither." I heard Grover respond. "But I could have sworn..."

"It was nothing. Go along Grover. You still have an exam to take tomorrow."

"Don't remind me."

They went their separate ways, leaving us in the dark. My heart was ricocheting inside my chest and I was sweating profusely. We waited there for what felt like forever, until, finally, I felt that the coast was clear. Mistle snuck back to her dorm room while I snuck back to mine, and opened the door to find Grover laying comfortably on his bed, as though he had been there all night.

"Hey." he said. No trusting myself to talk, I just nodded a greeting.

"So you ready for that test tomorrow?" he asked.

"A-as ready as anyone else." I mumbled.

He looked at me with concern. "Hey man, you okay?"

"Yeah I'm just, you know, tired." I turned my back towards him so he couldn't read my expression and know I was lying.

"Alright then. Good night."

That night I had a different dream, for once. I saw the Indian boy and the red headed girl running. They were older now, around ten now, and they were terrified. I watched, in horror, as a beast with maybe eight heads growled after them. Then the girl screamed and began to glow, and all of a sudden the monster was flying backwards. It got up and roared, jumping towards the two. This time, the Indian screamed and he suddenly had vines erupt in front of him and tie down the beast. The girl grunted and she grew brighter and hotter, then she stuck out her arm and sent the light onto the beast, and then it burst into flame but it just kept getting bigger, and I could feel the heat of the inferno, and then I woke up.

I was gasping for breath and the smell of smoke burned my nostrils. I looked around and saw that it was still night time and there was no fire. The windows were open, the pale light of the moon shining through, and Grover was asleep, dead to the world. I kicked of the blankets and closed my eyes. What did all these dreams mean? How are they connected to me? What's going on? A million more questions swam around in my head and it was a while before I went back to sleep.

The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam, my eyes swimming with all the Greek and Roman names I'd misspelled, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.

For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about Mistle's and my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.

"Percy," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's ... it's for the best." His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Nancy Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.

I mumbled, "Okay, sir."

"I mean ..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."

Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out.

"Right," I said, trembling.

"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say ... you're not normal, Percy. That's nothing to be—"

"Thanks," I blurted. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."

"Percy—"

But I was already gone.

On the last day of the term, I shoved my clothes into my suitcase.

The other guys were joking around, talking about their vacation plans. One of them was going on a hiking trip to Switzerland. Another was cruising the Caribbean for a month. They were juvenile delinquents, like me, but they were _rich _juvenile delinquents. Their daddies were executives, or ambassadors, or celebrities. I was a nobody, from a family of nobodies.

They asked me what I'd be doing this summer and I told them I was going back to the city. What I didn't tell them was that I'd have to get a summer job walking dogs or selling magazine subscriptions, and spend my free time worrying about where Mistle and I'd go to school in the fall, since there were only so many combined Elementary schools and Middle schools close to home. I learned that she'd been kicked out as well, but she wouldn't tell me why, so I decided to not intrude, since it must be a touchy subject, for her to not want to tell me.

"Oh," one of the guys said. "That's cool."

They went back to their conversation as if I'd never existed.

The only person I dreaded saying good-bye to was Grover, but as it turned out, I didn't have to. He'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as Mistle and I had, so there we were, together again, heading into the city.

During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.

Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.

Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. And I guess Mistle couldn't either.

We said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"

Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"

We confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.

Grover's eye twitched. "How much _did _you hear?"

"Oh ... not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?" we said in unison.

He winced. "Look, Percy, Mistle ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math teachers and demon ELA teachers …"

"Grover—"

"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you two were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds and Mrs. Electric, and ..."

"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar," we said in unison.

His ears turned pink.

From his shirt pocket, he fished out two grubby business cards, one for me and one for Mistle. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.

The card was in fancy script, which was murder on my dyslexic eyes, but I finally made out something like:

_Grover Underwood_

_Keeper_

_Half-Blood Hill_

_Long Island, New York_

_(800)_ _009-0009_

"What's Half—" we both started to ask.

"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um ... summer address."

My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy. I looked over at Mistle, and saw that she looked bummed, too.

"Okay," we said glumly. "So, like, if I want to come visit your mansion."

He nodded. "Or...or if you need me."

"Why would I need you?" I said, and Mistle whacked me on the back of the head for saying that.

It came out harsher than I meant it to, though, and she knew that, since it was a soft whack, and not one of her harder whacks.

Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, Mistle, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."

We stared at him.

All year long, I'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without me. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended _me. _And Mistle was shocked since she also thought that I was the one that defended Grover, and not the other way around.

"Grover," I said, "What exactly are you protecting us from?"

There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs.

The driver cursed and steered the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.

After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Mistle, Grover, and I filed outside with everybody else.

We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway there was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.

Sitting at the fruit stand were three old ladies who were knitting the biggest pair of socks I've ever seen. What was weirder was that their forms were flickering in between beautiful young woman and the old ladies, as if it couldn't make up which form it should show me.

The funny thing is... I've seen them before. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle as their gazes met mine.

Next to me Grover was tense. "Oh, crap, please tell me they aren't looking at the both of you."

"Yeah, they are. Huh. You think those socks would fit me?" but even as the words came out of my mouth, I knew this was not the time for jokes. While Mistle just said, "Yeah, they are."

"Not f-funny, Percy. Not funny at all." His voice was laced with fear. "Come on Percy, Mistle, let's get back on the bus." he tried pushing us back onto the bus, but there was no way we were getting back on there. That thing stank to high Heaven.

We stayed back and my eyes automatically went to the old ladies, with their forms still flickering. I watched one of them pick up a piece of yarn, a bright, electric blue one, and another one pulled out a big pair of scissors and cut the yarn. I could hear the snip of the blades as if they were right next to my ear. Mistle made motions with her hands, as if she were picking something up and tying a string to it, and she was muttering words under her breath. The old ladies(form still flickering) looked at her quizzically, and Mistle did the motion again, and started to repeat what she was muttering. The old ladies(still flickering) picked up the piece of yarn they'd just cut, took a piece of thin, barely visible string that was clear, and tied it to the end of the piece of yarn they'd cut, took more electric blue yarn, and slid it onto the end of the clear string, and knit it into place. They packed up the yarn and left. Just then the bus roared back to life.

"Hell yeah!" The bus driver said, and everybody cheered and got back on the bus.

As I sat down in my seat I started to feel feverish, and Mistle looked like that as well. I looked at Grover who seemed just as bad off as me. I still couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen them once. The memory's faint and I can't seem to bring it up. I let it go for now, and turned to Grover. He owes me some explanations. Mistle had the same thought, because she turned around in her seat to face Grover.

"Grover?" we said.

"Yeah?"

"What are you not telling us?"

He dabbed his forehead with his shirtsleeve. "Percy, Mistle, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"

"You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like ... Mrs. Dodds and Mrs. Electric, are they?"

His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds and Mrs. Electric. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."

"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn," I didn't tell him the rest of what I'd seen, and neither did Mistle.

He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.

He said, "You saw her snip the cord."

"Yeah. So?" But even as we said it, I knew it was a big deal. And I bet Mistle did, too.

"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb. "I don't want this to be like the last time. Or even worse," he said the last sentence while looking at Mistle.

"What last time?" we asked.

"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth. But now maybe first grade," he whispered the very last part, probably hoping we wouldn't hear, but we both did.

"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. I could tell he was also scaring Mistle. "What are you talking about?"

"Let me walk the both of you home from the bus station. Promise me."

This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could. As did Mistle.

"Is this like a superstition or something?" we asked.

No answer.

"Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"

He looked at us mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers we'd like best on our coffins.

* * *

**And scene! Finally! It took me forever to write this. And I am so sorry for the long wait. I promise I'll try to update sooner!**

**Until next time, this is Mistle11411 signing out.**


	6. 3 Ladies Knit the Socks of Death, huh?

**Okay, so sorry for the late update! I changed around the last chapter and added a few things to the prologue. Just tellin you so that you can check it out and not be confused later on. Okay, that's all!**

**Disclaimer: I don't and never will own PJO, all rights go to Rick Riordan.**

* * *

Mistle's POV

To say that I was confused would be the fuckin' understatement of the century. Each time I asked someone about Mrs. Electric they'd look at me like I was fuckin' insane. Instead, there was this really perky teacher named Mrs. Dubbs. WHERE THE HELL'D SHE COME FROM, DAMN IT!? After a bit of constant questioning, I started to believe them. Mrs. Electric never existed. And Perce also agreed with me, that she did exist, and I agreed with him that Mrs. Dodds existed. And I wasn't agreeing with him just to make im' feel better, she really did exist. But I did really start to believe them. That is, until I asked Grover.

"Hey, Grove," I ran up to Grover, calling him by his nick name. "Do you know what happened to Mrs. Electric," I asked, looking up at him. *Sigh* I knew he would be taller than me, but I was still rather small for my age. Percy could still carry me with ease, which indicated I was kinda small for my age.

Now, if Grover had said "Who?" I probably would've signed myself into a mental institution. He hesitated, though. As if thinking about the answer that I would believe the most.

"N-no idea who you're talking about," he answered. He stuttered. Stuttering is a sign that he's lying.

I looked up at him. "This isn't funny, Grover. What happened to Mrs. Electric? C'mon, please tell me."

Before he could answer me, the bell rang, signaling that his free break(he didn't have a class during gym, so he just had a free period) and my recess was over. He muttered, "Sorry, got to go. I have to get to class," and then he limped away. I was getting frustrated. There WAS a Mrs. Electric. I know it. I just had no way to prove it. Which, let me tell you, sucked.

As the month went on, I became restless and grumpy, as did Percy, which is a bad thing since we're usually never tired and always awake, which meant something was wrong, but I didn't know what. During the time, the news kept constantly talking about the freak weather. Planes were getting hit in the Atlantic, getting hit by random storms and almost immediately going down. Chicago city was experiencing the worst lightning storm the country had ever faced. A few days ago, a tornado touched down just a few miles away from our school.

My grades took a turn for the worse going from all high As to low Bs to Cs pretty quickly, and Percy's grades went down from pretty good Cs to low Ds and Fs. Which was bad, even for him.

I was also getting continuous visions and dreams, and nightmares, that just wouldn't stop, and would keep waking me up in the middle of the night. But I would always paint or write down my dreams and visions before I forgot, not the nightmares though, because I would love to forget them. I now had multiple portraits of people I'd never met and strange poems. Really, one of the poems went like this:

_Two half bloods of the eldest gods_

_Shall reach ten and sixteen against all odds_

_And see the world in endless sleep_

_The hero's soul, cursed blade shall reap_

_A look in the eyes that's seen all_

_Shall make help him make his final call_

_A single choice shall end his days_

_Olympus to preserve or raze_

I mean, what is that about. And then there were the portraits. But there was a particular one that I always came back to, for some weird reason. It was the portrait of a boy, and he was pretty cute, but I don't know how I could draw a portrait of him, since I'd never seen or met him before, or anybody that looked like him for that matter. He had red eyes, but I still thought they were beautiful, his skin tone the color of a slightly darker warm ivory, messy white hair swept to one side, and sharp, shark like teeth. There was also a name at the bottom, Soul Eater Evans, that I'd somehow thought up.

My bullying continued, but it wasn't too bad, but I always got blamed _for _the bullying, even though I didn't bully, and I don't know why. But one day it just got too out of hand. I can take the bullying if it's to me, but if it's about a family member, I will get you. I was sent into the hallway in almost every class for supposedly bullying. Finally, in science, while our teacher was talking to another in the hallway, Shiley whispered to her friend something that finally made me snap, "I know where Mistle got her stupidness from," she said. I wanted to correct her by saying that stupidness wasn't a word and that the correct term was actually stupidity, but I let it slide.

"Where?" she asked, hiding her snickers, and I continued acting like I hadn't heard them.

"From her brother, the bastard child," she said snickering.

And then I snapped. I got up from my chair so fast it fell backwards, stalked towards Shiley, and punched her in the face.

Mrs. Ray, the teacher, came in when she heard the yelling of the other student's, and saw Shiley on the floor, with me by her. She told me to step outside into the hall so that she could talk to me about starting a fight for no reason. I snapped and called her an Old Sot. I don't know what it means, but it sounded perfect for her. My teacher got an angry look on her face, told another teacher to watch her class, grabbed one of my triceps, and dragged me to the Principal's office. The Principal wasn't in there, so before she went to get the Principal, she forcefully sat me down in one of the chairs, and told me to stay still, so I decided to make a smart-aleck by saying, "Well, what else am I gonna do besides sit here, ηλίθιοι, cepit oblivio, غير محب, múinteoir," and her face turned red and I snickered, not bothering to hide it, before she stormed out. I somehow understood that it meant stupid, oblivious, unloving, teacher in this exact order-Greek, Latin, Arabic, and Irish Gaelic... Or is it just Irish? Not sure.

But then I remembered where I was, and began glaring at the mirror on the bottom half of the Principal's desk. What I saw didn't really shock me, seeing as to what had been happening the past few weeks. I had dark circles under my eyes from not being able to sleep, my eyes a dark, forest green since they changed with my mood. My face was slightly smeared with my paints that I'd been coloring with during the night, my shirt and jacket were wrinkled, covered with paint smears and splotches, and my pants were also slightly covered with paint. I usually hated wearing a jacket during this time of year, but I wore it to cover my right forearm, because I'd been using an ink pen to draw on my arm, and what I came up with was a bit shocking. It looked like a tattoo, but a somehow professionally drawn tattoo. It was a trident, SPQR, and a single stripe, and I somehow understood that the tattoo stood as something that said daughter of Neptune, first year of service, and that SPQR meant _Senatus Populusque Romanus. _I also usually wouldn't wear jeans(unless necessary) but Capri's or shorts during this time of year, but I had also drawn a tattoo on my left ankle with three interlocking spirals that I somehow stood for many things, but that on my ankle it stood for the Land, Sea, and Sky. I had more on me, but I didn't really have to hide them since they were on my triceps, around the middle of my thigh, my back(don't ask cause I don't know _how_ they got there), and my neck.**(AN: I'm not telling you what all the tattoo's are about cause it'd kinda give away part of my story for later on, so yeah. But review if you think you know if you wanna.) **Then I felt angry and frustrated. Why did this happen to me? I was only six. I must have done something horrible to deserve all this. It must be my fault for all this. It has be my fault! I felt hot tears of a lot of different emotions prick at my eyes, but I blinked them back. I can't cry. I couldn't cry. Crying was a weakness. I always remembered what happened if I cried, so I just didn't. Then I heard the door open and close, and I knew the Principal was here to give me a stern talking to.

A few hours later, I was in my dorm room studying for my Latin test. Well, I was pretending to study. I knew all this stuff already, and I'd finish it in a breeze with a perfect score. So instead of studying, I was painting, and thinking about the nightmares I'd been having. I felt a connection with every single one of them, which was weird.

My dreams were like this, and went in this order:

The first one was of a little boy that looked Latino with black curly hair and elfish, troublemaker features. It would start off with his mom and him in what I guessed was her workshop. They would be locking up for the night but the mom would accidently forget her keys, and she'd go get them and leave the boy at the front of the shop. The door leading to the workshop would close and lock itself, separating the little boy and his mother. Then a woman would rise from the ground a few feet in front of the boy, and scare him. He'd stumble back, and yet the woman would still walk forward. Then the boys hands would light on fire, all by themselves, and the whole shop would be engulfed in flames, and the little boy would somehow make it out, but the mother always died in the flames in the back of the workshop.

The next night I dreamt of a small, Indian child running for his life, his dad behind him urging him to run faster. His dad trips and the boy doesn't realize it until he hears his father's scream as whatever beast was chasing them started tearing into him. The boy turned to run back to him but his father convinced him to go. So the child went the site of his father being devoured probably scaring him for life. Both of those children couldn't have been more than eight.

The next night I dreamt of a small, blond haired, blue eyed child that couldn't have been more than two at the least. It would start with the little boy crying and screaming for someone named Lia, and being taken away by wolves. Then it would fade away to a forest scene. The little boy would be fighting the wolves; a wolf would sneak up behind the boy, and pounce on him before the boy could react. Then the other wolves would pounce as well. I would always force myself awake on this one. It was bad enough watching a kid's parent getting burned or mauled, but to see a helpless child get eaten. I got sick just thinking about it.

Unfortunately, it didn't stop there; instead I had to go through more nightmares. Each leaving me worse than before. I dreamed of a girl and her mother drowning in tar, a woman's voice yelling and cursing, saying something about having only delayed the rise of, and then I'd lose what she was saying. Then I'd hear her say to them, always before waking up, 'You will not escape me.'

The next nightmare is of a boy and girl playing on the floor at their father's feet. I immediately have a sense of dread, and, a moment later, my feeling is confirmed when their father cries out, 'NO!' and the house explodes, rattling my teeth.

The next night, I see a girl, about eight or so, with bright, blood red hair and lightly tanned skin. She's on a picnic with her dad. She gets angry with her father and screams at him. He screams back with just as much fire. I don't know what they are saying but that feeling of dread is back. There is no explosion, instead the ground starts to shake and it opens up. The fissure spreads quickly towards the little girl and her father. The argument is forgotten, and the father's paternal instincts kick in, shoving his daughter out of harm's way. The earth opens beneath his feet and he starts to fall. The girl screams again, this time in despair, and the ground suddenly closes up. Unfortunately, it closes right on the man's legs. I wake up to the sound of his pain-filled scream.

The worst one is the last one, in this nerve-racking cycle. Another girl, this time with raven colored hair and shocking blue eyes around my age, is running with two blondes and a brunette, the blondes, a boy and a little girl, who are possibly siblings, the brunette, a girl, being carried, because the girl couldn't have been more than one or one and a half years old, by the blond boy. Behind them are these creatures thirsting for blood. Ahead of them, urging them on is another creature who looks oddly familiar. The raven-haired girl convinces them to keep going, and she bravely faces the monsters. They surround her. Lightning flashes followed by a jaw-rattling BOOM! and I shoot up, wide awake, every single time.

Then the cycle of dreams would repeat, and no matter how much I saw them, they still left me shivering in fear and feeling nauseous. I felt that these people were important. I couldn't begin to understand it, let alone explain it, but it was like I had a...connection to them. Like, we were all connected somehow in an unforeseen bond, maybe? I don't know. And for some reason it felt like I had seen them all before, and knew who they were, but I couldn't _quite_ place it, for some reason.

I stopped thinking about them, and looked at my painting. Or, should I say, paintings. Without realizing it, I'd started painting multiple paintings, all portraits(from different perspectives.) My breath caught in my throat when I looked at them. Two of them were self portraits, one of Percy and one of me, from the front, but we looked older. Percy looked about sixteen or so, and I looked about ten. We were both grinning like insane people in the portraits. We were in what looked like Greek armor, and had swords in our hands. I had a charm bracelet on my right wrist, with all different kinds of charms. The next one was me, also looking ten in this one, but it was like the perspective of someone behind me. My back was covered in tattoos, as well as my triceps, and I could see the slightest bit of tattoo sneaking from the front of my thighs, and a tattoo on my right forearm, and my left ankle. Those were the tattoos I had on me right now, but I hadn't planned on doing these paintings, nor the others. And I was starting to get a headache. The last one was of my ten year old face. My forehead had a crescent moon tattoo in the middle of it, and it was colored indigo. There were also more tattoos leading down my shoulder, neck, back, and so on. And that's when the pain started.

The small headache I had before, that hadn't really been bothering me much at all, turned into a full blown out headache. The room suddenly grew really hot, and it started to spin ever so slightly. I started to see dark, and then I passed out from it.

I woke up only a second later, but it was dark, as if somebody had turned off the lights. I started to say, "Oh, man. I hope I didn't spill anything," but then realized I couldn't hear myself. But I could still hear the vibration of the words in my throat. And then I realized what must've happened. My blackout must've cut off the chip that was working in my head, to help me not be blind, deaf, and mute. _'Crap!' _I thought. _'It must've only cut off the part of the chip that was helping me see and hear.' _I sighed. I got up and let my special talent come over**(A/N: Her special talent is like Tophs in Avatar: The Last Air bender, basically. And her eyes are still green.) **I walked over to my bed and grabbed my textbook for Mr. Brunner's class. I was going to get air, but I took the book, so that if a teacher caught me, I could say I was going to Mr. Brunner's classroom so that he could help me. What evidence did they have that would say that I was lying?

I started walking down the stairs, and then the hall, when I felt someone watching me, but could feel no one behind me. Which was strange, since I should've felt an interruption in the vibrations of the earth, or the air. I turned around and started walking faster. And that was when I felt the interruptions, and that it was walking fast, and toward me… and I didn't know who it was. So that was when I took off running down the hall. I could feel the person following me, and going fast, but not fast enough to catch me, since I was really fast, even for my age, I was like a speed demon. After a few turns, I lost them, but I didn't stop running. I was turning onto the corner that led onto the hall that had Mr. Brunner's classroom, when I ran into somebody, and it was a boy.

He stumbled backwards and almost fell because of how fast I was going, but he regained his balance and stood straight up again. I shook my head and looked up at him, with fear probably in my eyes, from such close contact. He gave a sigh of relief, for some reason. And I was able to 'hear' him because of the vibrations in the air that his voice made, so I could tell what he was doing or saying.

"Mistle, what are you doing here," Percy said.

"I was going outside to get some air," I said with relief, all the fear draining from me. Percy would protect me from anyone trying to hurt me. _'Except for one,' _the vicious voice by my ear said. Sometimes she popped up, and I hated calling her the voice, so at that moment I decided to just call her Penny. '_Shut up!'_ I told her, and continued my explanation, "I brought my textbook to say that I was going to see if Mr. Brunner could help me if I get caught."

He smiled and said, "C'mon, let's go outside together, then, since that's what I was going to do."

"Okay," I said, glad that I hadn't gotten in trouble, and that he hadn't, either. With almost all of my relief for him, though.

Everything was going good until I heard something that made my heart skip a beat.

"-worried about Mistle and Percy, sir" I heard Grover say. And by Percy's rigid body, I could tell he'd heard, too.

Now, normally, I don't eavesdrop on people, but I dare you to not listen when your friend is telling a teacher that he was worried about you. Pressing myself against the wall, I moved closer to the door, and Percy did the same. Well, I followed him.

"... alone this summer," Grover was saying. "I mean, _two_ Kindly One's in the _school_! Now that we know for sure, and _they _know too—"

"We would only make matters worse by rushing them," Mr. Brunner said. "We need the boy and girl to mature more."

"But they may not have time. The summer solstice dead line—"

"Will have to be resolved without them, Grover. Let them enjoy their ignorance while they still can."

"Sir, they _saw _them..."

"Their imagination," Mr. Brunner insisted. "The Mist over the students and staff will be enough to convince them of that."

"Sir, I ... I can't fail in my duties again." Grover's voice was choked with emotion. "You know what that would mean."

"You haven't failed, Grover," Mr. Brunner said kindly. "I should have seen her for what she was. Now let's just worry about keeping Mistle and Percy alive until next fall—"

The mythology books dropped out of our hands and hit the floor with two thuds.

Mr. Brunner went silent.

A shadow slid across the lighted glass of Brunner's office door, the shadow of something much taller than our wheelchair-bound teacher, holding something that looked suspiciously like an archer's bow.

My heart hammering, I picked up my textbook while Percy picked up his, we backed down the hall, and quietly slid into the closest door to us, which happened to be the janitor's closet.

Clop, clop, clop, clop. Hooves? OK. I was definitely going insane.

"I must've misheard something." Mr. Brunner's voice rang through the silence. He sighed. "My nerves haven't been right since the winter solstice."

"Mine neither." I heard Grover respond. "But I could have sworn..."

"It was nothing. Go along Grover. You still have an exam to take tomorrow."

"Don't remind me."

They went their separate ways, leaving us in the dark. My heart was ricocheting inside my chest and I was sweating profusely. We waited there for what felt like forever, until, finally, Percy and I felt that the coast was clear. Percy snuck back to his dorm room while I snuck back to mine. I changed and went to bed, thinking about what Grover said, and thinking about what it could mean. I fell asleep a few hours later.

That night I had a different dream, for once. I saw the Indian boy and the red headed girl running. They were older now, around ten now, and they were terrified. I watched in horror, as a beast with maybe eight heads growled after them. Then the girl screamed and began to glow, and all of a sudden the monster was flying backwards. It got up and roared, jumping towards the two. This time, the Indian screamed and he suddenly had vines erupt in front of him and tie down the beast. The girl grunted and she grew brighter and hotter, then she stuck out her arm and sent the light onto the beast, and then it burst into flame but it just kept getting bigger, and I could feel the heat of the inferno, and then I woke up.

I had my sight and hearing back by then, and I was gasping for breath and the smell of smoke burned my nostrils. I looked around and saw that it was still night time and there was no fire, and that my vision and hearing had returned. The windows were open, the pale light of the moon shining through, and I was really glad I had a dorm room to myself. I kicked of the blankets and closed my eyes. What did all these dreams mean? How are they connected to me? What's going on? A million more questions swam around in my head and it was a while before I went back to sleep.

The next afternoon, as I was leaving the three-hour Latin exam, Mr. Brunner called me back inside.

For a moment, I was worried he'd found out about Mistle's and my eavesdropping the night before, but that didn't seem to be the problem.

"Mistle," he said. "Don't be discouraged about leaving Yancy. It's ... it's for the best." His tone was kind, but the words still embarrassed me. Even though he was speaking quietly, the other kids finishing the test could hear. Shiley Bobofit smirked at me and made sarcastic little kissing motions with her lips.

I mumbled, "Okay, sir."

"I mean ..." Mr. Brunner wheeled his chair back and forth, like he wasn't sure what to say. "This isn't the right place for you. It was only a matter of time."

Here was my favorite teacher, in front of the class, telling me I couldn't handle it. After saying he believed in me all year, now he was telling me I was destined to get kicked out. I just felt worthless sometimes.

"Right," I said, trembling.

"No, no," Mr. Brunner said. "Oh, confound it all. What I'm trying to say ... you're not normal, Mistle. That's nothing to be—"

"Thanks," I whispered. "Thanks a lot, sir, for reminding me."

"Mistle—"

But I was already gone.

On the last day of the term, I neatly folded my clothes into my suitcase.

Everyone else was talking about their vacation plans, but I just hung out in the corner waiting for Percy, worrying if Percy and I would be able to go to the same school next fall, since both of us had been kicked out. I knew he wouldn't want me to worry about it, but I couldn't help _but_ worry, because I'd always gone to the same school as him, and him not being there with me would surely cause me to have a panic attack and have to go to the hospital or something the first day of school.

The only person I dreaded saying goodbye to was Grover, since nobody else had tried to be nice to me, well, in my class's, anyway. Everyone else either didn't know me, or had a crush on me. But I didn't have to say good bye to Grover since he'd booked a ticket to Manhattan on the same Greyhound as Percy and I, so we still got to hang out for a while, which made me instantly happy.

During the whole bus ride, Grover kept glancing nervously down the aisle, watching the other passengers. It occurred to me that he'd always acted nervous and fidgety when we left Yancy, as if he expected something bad to happen.

Before, I'd always assumed he was worried about getting teased. But there was nobody to tease him on the Greyhound.

Finally I couldn't stand it anymore. And I guess Percy couldn't either.

We said, "Looking for Kindly Ones?"

Grover nearly jumped out of his seat. "Wha—what do you mean?"

We confessed about eavesdropping on him and Mr. Brunner the night before the exam.

Grover's eye twitched. "How much _did _you hear?"

"Oh...not much. What's the summer solstice dead-line?" we said in unison.

He winced. "Look, Percy, Mistle ... I was just worried for you, see? I mean, hallucinating about demon math and demon ELA teachers …"

"Grover—"

"And I was telling Mr. Brunner that maybe you two were overstressed or something, because there was no such person as Mrs. Dodds and Mrs. Electric, and ..."

"Grover, you're a really, really bad liar," we said in unison.

His ears turned pink.

From his shirt pocket, he fished out two grubby business cards, one for me and one for Mistle. "Just take this, okay? In case you need me this summer.

The card was in fancy script, which was probably murder on Percy's dyslexic eyes, but I easily made out something like:

_Grover Underwood_

_Keeper_

_Half-Blood Hill_

_Long Island, New York_

_(800)_ _009-0009_

"What's Half—" we both started to ask.

"Don't say it aloud!" he yelped. "That's my, um ... summer address."

My heart sank. Grover had a summer home. I'd never considered that his family might be as rich as the others at Yancy. I looked over at Percy, and saw that he looked bummed, too.

"Okay," we said glumly. "So, like, if we want to come visit your mansion."

He nodded. "Or...or if you need me."

"Why would I need you?" said Percy, and I whacked him on the back of the head for saying that. But softly, cause I knew he didn't mean it to be so harsh.

Grover blushed right down to his Adam's apple. "Look, Percy, Mistle, the truth is, I—I kind of have to protect you."

We stared at him.

All year long, Percy'd gotten in fights, keeping bullies away from him. I'd lost sleep worrying that he'd get beaten up next year without him. And here he was acting like he was the one who defended _us. _And Percy was shocked since he also thought that he was the one that defended Grover, and not the other way around.

"Grover," he said, "What exactly are you protecting us from?"

There was a huge grinding noise under our feet. Black smoke poured from the dashboard and the whole bus filled with a smell like rotten eggs.

The driver cursed and steered the Greyhound over to the side of the highway.

After a few minutes clanking around in the engine compartment, the driver announced that we'd all have to get off. Percy, Grover, and I filed outside with everybody else.

We were on a stretch of country road—no place you'd notice if you didn't break down there. On our side of the highway there was nothing but maple trees and litter from passing cars. On the other side, across four lanes of asphalt shimmering with afternoon heat, was an old-fashioned fruit stand.

Sitting at the fruit stand were three old ladies who were knitting the biggest pair of socks I've ever seen. What was weirder was that their forms were flickering in between beautiful young woman and the old ladies, as if it couldn't make up which form it should show me.

The funny thing is... I've seen them before. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle as their gazes met mine.

Next to me Grover was tense. "Oh, crap, please tell me they aren't looking at the both of you."

"Yeah, they are. Huh. You think those socks would fit me?" Percy said, but even as the words came out of his mouth, I could tell he knew this wasn't the time for jokes. While I just said, "Yeah, they are."

"Not f-funny, Percy. Not funny at all." His voice was laced with fear. "Come on Percy, Mistle, let's get back on the bus." he tried pushing us back onto the bus, but there was no way we were getting back on there. That thing stank to high Heaven.

We stayed back and my eyes automatically went to the old ladies, with their forms still flickering. I watched one of them pick up a piece of yarn, a bright, electric blue one, and another one pulled out a big pair of scissors and cut the yarn. I could hear the snip of the blades as if they were right next to my ear. I started to subconsciously make motions with my hands, as if I were picking something up and tying a string to it, and I was muttering words under my breath. The old ladies(form still flickering) looked at me quizzically, and I did the motion again, and started to repeat what I was muttering. The old ladies(still flickering) picked up the piece of yarn they'd just cut, took a piece of thin, barely visible string that was clear, and tied it to the end of the piece of yarn they'd cut, took more electric blue yarn, and slid it onto the end of the clear string, and knit it into place. They packed up the yarn and left. Just then the bus roared back to life.

"Hell yeah!" The bus driver said, and everybody cheered and got back on the bus.

As I sat down in my seat I started to feel feverish, and Percy looked like that as well. I looked at Grover who seemed just as bad off as me. I still couldn't shake the feeling that I had seen them once. The memory's faint and I can't seem to bring it up. I let it go for now, and turned to Grover. He owes me some explanations. Percy had the same thought, because he turned around in his seat to face Grover.

"Grover?" we said.

"Yeah?"

"What are you not telling us?"

He dabbed his forehead with his shirtsleeve. "Percy, Mistle, what did you see back at the fruit stand?"

"You mean the old ladies? What is it about them, man? They're not like ... Mrs. Dodds and Mrs. Electric, are they?"

His expression was hard to read, but I got the feeling that the fruit-stand ladies were something much, much worse than Mrs. Dodds and Mrs. Electric. He said, "Just tell me what you saw."

"The middle one took out her scissors, and she cut the yarn," I didn't tell him the rest of what I'd seen, and neither did Percy.

He closed his eyes and made a gesture with his fingers that might've been crossing himself, but it wasn't. It was something else, something almost—older.

He said, "You saw her snip the cord."

"Yeah. So?" But even as we said it, I knew it was a big deal. And I bet Percy did, too.

"This is not happening," Grover mumbled. He started chewing at his thumb "I don't want this to be like the last time. Or even worse," he said the last sentence while looking at me.

"What last time?" we asked.

"Always sixth grade. They never get past sixth. But now maybe first grade," he whispered the very last part, probably hoping we wouldn't hear, but we both did.

"Grover," I said, because he was really starting to scare me. I could tell he was also scaring Percy. "What are you talking about?"

"Let me walk the both of you home from the bus station. Promise me."

This seemed like a strange request to me, but I promised he could, as did Percy.

"Is this like a superstition or something?" we asked.

No answer.

"Grover—that snipping of the yarn. Does that mean somebody is going to die?"

He looked at us mournfully, like he was already picking the kind of flowers we'd like best on our coffins.

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**And scene! Finally! It took me forever to write this. And I am so sorry for the long wait. I promise I'll try to update sooner!**

**Until next time, this is Mistle11411 signing out.**


	7. Behind The Scenes 2

**Okay, my second snippet for this story I hope it's okay. And my second chap today whew.**

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~In the Fates' Void~

The Fates looked at the powerful demigods, remembering both of the occurrences. The boy and girl didn't look like much, but they knew that with the right amount of training they would be formidable and dangerous opponents. Both born with the blood of three of the greatest civilizations the world has known, and with a less known civilization, but one that could be just as powerful, and with all of the godly blood in them, you'd have to be blind, stupid, and ignorant to say otherwise. They were wary of these mere twelve and six year olds, though. Never have they encountered beings who had no definite life strings. ALL living creatures had a string- immortal or mortal, animal or plant- and they all will one-day face the end. Yet these children have managed to defy the law of fate. Their strings, a beautiful swirl of sea green and a green the color of the river Styx with grayish silver, blue, black, yellow, red, pale pink, brown, purple, fire red, and pitch black stripes, and a black aura with small, bright lights surrounding it, was impossible to read. They knew that they would be important, the fact that they had so much god blood in them, but they could not see exactly what lay ahead for them, and they hated it. The fates saw everything and knew everything, it's what made everyone, even the gods, fear them. So it was beyond frustrating not being able to read these insignificant and fragile boy's and girl's future. And they were confused as to what had happened with their flickering of forms from old to young, which couldn't happen unless they were blood related or had seen them in their younger years, but it was impoosible, and they dismissed the idea.

They watched as the satyr, fruitlessly, tried to steer the boy and girl away from their gazes, but it was hopeless. They were somehow drawn to the boy and girl. Something deep inside them made them appear in front of the boy and girl again. The first time they had seen this boy, he had been no more than three. They remember how he had waddled away from his mother and climbed into their laps. He grabbed a string, it was one of Hephaestus's children, and he stretched it for a while. Then he reached for the shears but Atropos yanked it out of his reach. Unperturbed, he simply crawled towards her and held it out. Bewildered, she did what she was made to do- she cut the string. He nodded in contentment and reached, once again, into the basket and pulled out another string. He measured it, held it out, and Atropos cut it. This went on multiple times more until Lachesis decided that they should be on their way. Shooing the boy back towards his mother, they made sure to suppress the memory and they left. The next had been when the girl was around two and a half or so. They remembered how she had waddled away from her brothers and climbed onto their laps, like her older brother had. They could tell that the girl was a blind, deaf, and mute, and yet she could see them clear as day, hear them as if they were talking right in her ear with her not being deaf, and contacting them as if she could talk all the time. But they knew she had no chip that helped her do these things, for she was still too young. She grabbed a string, it was one of Aphrodite's children, and she stretched for a bit. She then reached for the shears, but Atropos yanked it out of her reach. Untroubled, she simply crawled towards her and held it out. Shocked, she cut the string. She nodded in satisfaction and reached, yet again, into the basket and pulled out another string. She measured it, held it out, and Atropos cut it. She then reached over and grabbed something they had never seen in their lifetimes, it was clear string. They'd never seen it, so they wondered how it'd gotten there. She measured it, and held it out to Atropos, so she cut it. She then took the first one her brother had cut, tied the string to the end of it, took what would've been the rest of the child's lifeline, and tied it onto the end of the clear string. She then indicated for them to start sewing the string into their socks again, and so they did. She watched, satisfied, and repeated them with the rest of the strings her brother had cut, and the ones she'd just cut. After this, Lachesis decided that they should be on their way. Shooing the girl back towards her brothers, they made sure to suppress the memory and they left.

At the time, they wondered if they should have ended the boy and girls lives right then and there. Never before had someone other than themselves decide someone's fate. Even now, gazing at the curious children, they considered picking out their strings and cutting them. Instead, by some unknown force, they found themselves reaching for a son of Hermes' string. They don't know why they did it, nor do they know why they were showing the children this. All they knew was that it had to be done. So they did it and, before they left, the girl did a motion with her hands and started to mutter under her breath. We looked at her curiously and she repeated it, and by some unknown force we reached for the clear string that hadn't been there before, measured it, cut it, tied it onto the end of the string, connected it onto the clear string, and sewed it back in place. Then they left.

Now they were in their space. It couldn't be called a room for it had no window, door, or furniture. It had no shape or depth. It would have been pitch black if not for the scrying glass that was floating in the middle of it. There they stood, watching the boy and girl through their scrying glass. The glass showed the auras of all who enter the scene, and their auras are blinding.

Picking out another piece of string, Clotho spoke, her voice surprisingly soft, like the string she spun. "Do you think we are making the right choice, letting them live?"

Her sister, Atropos, hesitated a moment before answering, her voice sharp, like the shears she uses to snip the threads of life. "I have no definite answer to that question for their future eludes us. On one hand, they may just be what Olympus needs. Yet, on the other, they may become the bane of our existence."

"Well, I think it is still too early to tell." Lachesis said, stretching her words out as she would with the strings. "I say we give them a few years."

"Let us give them till the end of their first quest before we start questioning. If, by then, they have not shown the true qualities of a hero, then we shall end their lives. If they do show true character, then we will allow them to live to do another quest. When they finishe that quest we will judge them again and so on." Clotho stated. The sisters nodded in unison. They then went back to the scrying glass.

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**Aaaaaaand scene! Okay, this was a really long snippet, but I hope it's okay. **

**Also…please review! I'd really like it if you do. Hey, that rhymed *giggle* And hopefully I'll update soon.**

**Until next time, this is Mistle11411 signing out.**


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